The Consequences of De-Stalinization in

Eastern Europe: The Comparative

Analysis of the Hungarian Revolution and
Prague Spring

By Emir Gönel

Submitted to
Central European University
Nationalism Studies Program

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts
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Supervisor: Professor Anton Pelinka

Budapest, Hungary
2009
 Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible and supported me through

this process. I owe my deepest gratitude to Anton Pelinka who has assisted me in numerous

ways and helped me with his comments and critiques, Kathryn Heffernan for her comments

and editing my thesis with patience and, Kata Eplenyi for showing me the historical traces

with the Revolution Tour in Budapest.

I am also indebted to my classmates for discussing the Hungarian Revolution with me

and finally to Eda Do an for being with me all over this process.
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 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... i
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................1
SECTION 1: COMMUNIST TAKEOVER AND STALINIST CONSOLIDATION IN
HUNGARY AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA............................................................................8
1.1: The Difference between Czechoslovak and Hungarian Communist Takeovers.................8
1.2: Stalinization in Hungary and Czechoslovakia: Rajk-Slansky Trials................................10
SECTION 2: DE-STALINIZATION IN HUNGARY AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA..............14
2.1: A Soviet Experiment in Hungary: Imre Nagy.................................................................14
2.2: Nagy on the New Course ...............................................................................................17
2.3: The Impact of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech on Hungary and Czechoslovakia ................19
2.4: The Reform and its Limits in the Era of Novotny...........................................................24
SECTION 3: HUNGARY 1956..........................................................................................28
3.1: Mutual Interaction: Poland and Hungary in 1956 ...........................................................28
3.2: Conceptualizing “1956”.................................................................................................36
SECTION 4: CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968.........................................................................49
4.1: The Prague Spring: Transformation in Czechoslovakia ..................................................49
4.2: De-centralizing Prague Spring: “The Slovak Question” .................................................61
SECTION 5: THE INVASIONS ........................................................................................70
5.1: Marxist-Leninist legacy: The Instrumental Approach to Nationalism .............................70
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5.3: The Soviet Invasion in 1956: Intimidation .....................................................................76

5.4: “The Rise of the Warsaw Five” in 1968 .........................................................................80
SECTION 6: NORMALIZATION ....................................................................................88
6.1: Same End – Different Results: Normalization in Hungary and Czechoslovakia..............88
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................95
On the Law of Peaceful Coexistence.....................................................................................95

ii
 INTRODUCTION

The Eastern European countries consolidated their communist regimes through

different repressive and contractual mechanisms under Joseph Stalin’s strict supervision.

Nikita Khrushchev’s attack on the Stalinist system brought Eastern European communist

leaderships into uncertainty and instability. Besides, people under communist regimes were

dissatisfied and frustrated because of stagnant economies, limits on private space and

consumption, constraints and censorship on social, cultural and political life. Khrushchev’s

“Thaw” allowed them to experience relative, monitored and limited liberalization. Many

reform-minded factions in the communist parties tried to accelerate reform process and

broaden their basis of political support. However, many divisions in workers’ and youth

unions and intellectuals would witness where the reform process had to be stopped. When

people had the chance to experience the slight enjoyment of freedom, they would not let it go.

The Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring were the most important examples in

Eastern Europe, where people tried to change the repressive and limiting nature of their

communist regimes and resisted alien intervention of the Soviet Union to protect their newly

established freedom. Both events were milestones of international socialism and directly of

the Soviet Union’s Eastern Europe policies. I chose to analyze the Hungarian Revolution and
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Prague Spring, because the Soviet Union’s responses were the reification of its limited vision

and fierce approach to the idea of deviation from the socialist road. The communist integrity

and Soviet interests had militated against indigenous design and development in Eastern

Europe.

The Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring had a causal parallelism with the Soviet

decision-making process. On the one hand, a revolutionary activism in Hungary gained

momentum after Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech”. The Prague Spring, on the other hand,
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 resulted in the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” In both cases, the relative liberalization process ended up

with the Soviet-imposed “normalization,” reversal of reforms and re-centralization.

The main aim of this research is to compare the Hungarian Revolution and Prague

Spring through different levels of analysis. Both events bore many resemblances in the

formation of dissident groups, intellectual and youth activism, the support of the workers’

union; carried sequential parallelism of events; followed by invasion and normalization

processes; and affected the Soviet’s attitude in inter-state relations. Analyzing both events is

interesting not only because of similarities and parallel patterns, but also the divergences

between the Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring such as the histories, historical relations

with the Soviet Union, the legitimacy of the governing parties, national formations,

democratic or authoritarian traditions, reasons of nonconformism, advancement of the civil

society and initiative, range and context of liberalization and reforms, the role of the

leadership and the degree of Soviet reaction. Even they differed in the normalization process

because of the distinct experiences during the military invasions.

By examining similarities and differences I will also concentrate on how national and

historical images and symbols had circulated in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and how the

idea of “national” and indigenous allegiances were fostered and challenged in both countries.

The secondary intention of this research, besides the comparative analysis, is to explain how

Soviet leaders treated the idea of “national” in Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary and
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Czechoslovakia, coped with indigenous nationalist allegiances and surpassed national

interests in the years of shattering in international socialism.

The central argument of the research is that the Soviet Union used the idea of

“national” in a hypocritical and dual way: denying national allegiances and imposing

international socialism, on the one hand, while allowing national formations to legitimize its

policies and justifying its actions, on the other. The suppression of the Hungarian Revolution

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 and Prague Spring reveals how the Soviet Union was bound up in its interpretation of

communism and one-party hegemony, the unity and integrity of its sphere of influence, and

its unacceptable stance against national interpretations of communism. The obsession of

losing control on its satellite countries and the paranoia of the possible influence from

Western countries resulted in the recursive invasions of the Soviet Union.

In the thesis, the causes and effects of Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring are

not represented as two historical non-interactive blocs. The historical forces in the crises, the

evolution of communism, the changing rationale of the Soviet leaderships on reformism, the

reciprocal historical process in the Eastern Europe and the effect of the ever-changing

international realities are crucially important in the historical analysis. The diverse actors, the

overlapping and conflicting interests and motivations, the causes of intra-party rivalries, the

reasons of the resentiment and resistance and the ill-balance between masses, indigenous

party elites and the Soviet Presidium are the central evaluation points in my multileveled

comparative analysis.

The research follows a historical evolutionary path, which is steadily supported by

comparative analyses between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I compare in the first section the

Hungarian and Czechoslovak communist takeover and Stalinist consolidation in order to

understand differences in the political atmosphere, the power bases of the communist parties

and the role of the Soviet leadership. The main difference, the legitimacy of the communist
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party, would lead Hungary and Czechoslovakia to different socialist evolution. On the other

hand, the communist parties consolidated their regimes with similar Stalinist methods and

actions. The Stalinist leaders purified the party due to purges, trials, imprisonment and

execution of the dissident members in the party. The infamous trials of Laszlo Rajk in

Hungary and Rudolf Slansky in Czechoslovakia would become the main symbols in de-

Stalinization and rehabilitation processes.

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 The next section concentrates on the de-Stalinization in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Khrushchev’s Secret Speech “On the Personality Cult and its Consequences” had a

tremendous impact on the relative decentralization in the Eastern Europe since the death of

Stalin. Matyas Rakosi in Hungary and Antonin Novotny in Czechoslovakia had copied

Stalin’s personality cult and tried to establish their totalitarian system. Thus, the attack on

Stalin’s personality and achievements was targeting directly the legitimacy of the indigenous

rulers and legality of their established systems. Rakosi’s replacement, reformist Imre Nagy,

envisaged in his “New Course” a new economic policy, purification of the party and

compensation for the crimes of the past. However, the Soviet leadership realized that Nagy

was leading Hungary to terra incognita and was removed from office. Consequently, Nagy’s

“New Course,” which mobilized frustrated masses in Hungary, proved the side-effects of the

“Secret Speech” in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, Czechoslovakia could delay its regime

reevaluation due to the disastrous consequences in Poland and Hungary. The Czechoslovak

leadership prevented the formation of adverse groups in society and managed the intra-party

stability.

In the third section, I examine the developments in Poland in 1956, the reasons of the

Poznan Revolt and the process in the “Polish October,” which sparked partially the Hungarian

Revolution. In turn, the reactions in Hungary influenced the Polish leadership and society.
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The Polish case cannot be overlooked, because it had a major impact on the social forces in

Hungary and on the Khrushchev’s rationale, precautions and actions. The conceptualization of

the events in 1956 is the center of the research, because the Hungarian Revolution provides

connections between the Polish case, Hungarian Revolution and Czechoslovak crisis in 1968.

The crisis in Hungary affected internationalist socialism and resulted in the auto-control of the

Eastern European communist regimes. Furthermore, I base my analysis on Hannah Arendt’s

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 “Spontaneous revolution,” Ferenc Vali’s “National revolution” and Gabor Gyani’s

“Counterrevolution” approaches to “1956.” The multiple actors with diverse interests and

motivation lead me into an “open-ended conclusion.” “1956” carried all elements such as

national, anti-Soviet, counterrevolutionary, revolutionary and anti-totalitarian, but the

different views converged in one common motivation, which was the fight for freedom.

In the fourth section, I concentrate on the Prague Spring, in which Alexander Dubcek

gave momentum to reform process in Czechoslovakia. The comparative analysis leads me to

examine one of the main differences between Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring,

which was the role of the party leadership. The Czechoslovak Communist Party could

appease the social forces and the Soviet leadership due to gradual and controlled development

in the reform process. However, the situation in Czechoslovakia started to deteriorate not only

because of the growing frustration of the society and the Soviet Union, but rather the party

followed an independent path to organize its domestic politics and foreign relations. My

analysis contains the “Slovak Question,” the ethnic composition in Czechoslovakia and its

reflection on the central and local parties, elections, representations, the decision-making and

reform process is one of the main distinctions between Hungarian Revolution and Prague

Spring. Moreover, following Scott Brown’s path, I try to explain why the Slovaks cannot be

overlooked be in the “centralized” Prague Spring. Indeed, the “Slovak Question,” including

federalization-democratization dilemma, was the catalyst of the Prague Spring.

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In the fifth section, I try to discover the reasons and motivations of the Soviet

invasions in 1956 and 1968. The psyche of the Soviet leadership cannot be analyzed unless

Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist approaches to “nationalism” were understood. Nationalism was

a dogmatic stigma and also an instrument for the Soviet Union. The reform movements,

resurgence of the social forces and National Fronts, increasing civil initiative, the search for a

new identity and formation of an independent foreign policy would result in the crucifixion of

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 the communist party in Eastern Bloc. The idea of “national” was used to suppress any liberal

and democratic reform and always connected to “bourgeois nationalism” and the influence of

the “imperial agents.” Therefore, the indigenous communist party must have been losing the

leading role over the society. Any deviations from the “socialist road” were stigmatized and

punished by the Soviet Union.

Eventually, Hungary and Czechoslovakia shared the same experience, but in different

degrees of violence and resistance. Both Hungarian and Czechoslovak communist parties

were the targets of the Soviet accusations. Both parties lost the initiative and

counterrevolutionary activism was close to seize power over the country. The main

differences, long-lived reform process and passive resistance, of the invasion of

Czechoslovakia emanated from the gradual pace of reforms, steady communication between

the communist party leaders of Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries and

relatively stronger party leadership. The two invasions revealed the legitimacy problematic of

Soviet-led international socialism in Eastern Europe. Besides international condemnation of

the invasion in 1968, the problems in legalizing “law of peaceful coexistence” in the

Brezhnev Doctrine resulted from the unexpected passive resistance of the Czechoslovak

society.

In the final section, I compare the normalization in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Although Soviets had prescribed regulations in the normalization and chosen appropriate
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leaders, the societies had experienced different degrees of repression, recentralization and

limitations, the normalization processes under Janos Kadar in Hungary and Gustav Husak in

Czechoslovakia had differed a lot. Finally, I will finish the research with the conclusion that

although the Soviet leadership approached more patiently to individual countries in East and

Central Europe and followed a pluralist decision-making course, the principles of the Soviet

Union on the protection of international socialism were much dominant. This led the Soviet

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 leadership to deteriorate the artificial atmosphere of the fraternal and mutual relations

between communist countries and undermined its sole legitimate leader-status.

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 SECTION 1: COMMUNIST TAKEOVER AND STALINIST
CONSOLIDATION IN HUNGARY AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA

1.1: The Difference between Czechoslovak and Hungarian Communist Takeovers

The goal of the Communist parties in the immediate post-war period was not to

destroy the nation, but rather to claim it as their own. Fulfilling Marx’s advice from the

Manifesto, they wanted to become the national classes.1 The Communists did not immediately

takeover the governments of the newly liberated Eastern European countries. Stalin’s

apprentices in Moscow, who were first political survivors, exiles and runaways and then

trained by Soviet elites and supervised according to the Soviet doctrines, took over their

countries gradually. The main strategy of the Soviets to achieve the consolidation of the

Stalinist system was, first, to ally with other parties before the elections or after governments

were formed, then, to make alliances with different groups or to quietly change their stance so

as to gradually cause friction amongst other parties, and finally, to eliminate the opposition.

Immediately after liberation, the very first governments were mixed cabinets

containing representatives of all or most pre-war parties who had not been tainted with

fascism or collaboration with German occupiers. To inspire confidence, the Communists

established ‘popular fronts’ out of all the anti-fascist parties. The existence of coalition

governments and the possibility of free political competition, including free elections, were
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not regarded as a permanent option by the communists. So they always arranged and occupied

leading offices in the interior and defense ministries. Thereby, they had control over local

administration, national police, security services and later information flow. Through

appointing all the leading personnel of the police and army, soon all the means of coercion

were in communists’ hands. Because of their improved conditions, the communists gradually

1
Walter A. Kemp, Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: A
Basic Contradictions? (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1999) pp. 95-96.
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 intensified their activities and pressure over the parties. They phased out the officers of other

parties and forced socialists to unite with communists.

Hungarian and Czechoslovak Communist Parties consolidated communism through

completely different ways. Hungary never enjoyed full political support of the masses, and the

communist party in Hungary relied on the Soviet support to establish its regime. On the

contrary, in Czechoslovakia, the communists were in a commanding position from the start

and the Red Army was not needed. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia always ranked

among the country’s four strongest parties.2 Czechoslovak Communists were able to operate

literally under the protection of the government; they had unlimited use of the tremendous

propaganda facilities of a free press and most of the party leaders were simultaneously

members of the Czechoslovak legislature and were thus actually paid salaries for their

subversive work.3 Submitting to Soviet guidance, after the Second World War, Czechoslovak

communist leadership introduced some of the takeover methods to consolidate its regime.

On the other hand, the postwar developments in Hungary followed the general path of

communist takeovers. Hungarian communists followed a strategy of coalition, increased their

influence in the trade unions and allied the Social Democrats and Smallholders’ Party. They

secured the ministry of the Interior and then sought further alliances with Socialists and the

National Peasant Party in order to counteract the strength of the Smallholders. In the end, the

communist parties in Hungary and Czechoslovakia waged a battle for power from below by
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mobilizing the masses. Ben Fowkes indicates that “window-dressing” had the aim to bring the

masses on to the stage as a means of pressure, though the true locus of decision-making laid

2
Edward Taborsky, Communism in Czechoslovakia 1948-1960 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1961), p. 6.
3
Ibid., pp. 9-10.
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 elsewhere. Consequently, the Action Committees of the National Front in Czechoslovakia

made a coup look like a revolution in February 1948.4

In contrast to neighboring Poland and Hungary, Czechoslovakia did not harbor anti-

Russian sentiment. The majority of the population had been won over to the idea of socialism

long before the communists usurped unlimited power. To be sure, the Soviets’ liberating role

in the Second World War – the part they played in the defeat of Hitler and in saving the

Czechoslovak people from national liquidation at the hands of the Nazis – led to respect and

sympathy for the USSR, augmented by a feeling of Slavonic mutuality. 5 On the other hand,

the two communist parties converged in many Stalinist policies and totalitarian measures.

Both Hungarian and Czechoslovak policies introduced five year economic plans, including

heavy industrialization, collectivization of the farms and rearmament of the military for an

expected war with the West. The countries’ social classes were devastated through repression,

imprisonment, police terror and surveillance, labor camps, executions, and trials.

1.2: Stalinization in Hungary and Czechoslovakia: Rajk-Slansky Trials

Heavy industrialization and forced agricultural collectivization resulted in, according

to the report of U.S Army Intelligence “Hungary: Resistance Activities and Potentials,”

widespread and intense passive resistance. The suppression of the multi-party system and
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communist domination of every aspect of political life intensified the antipathy of politically

conscious Hungarians. 6 Following the economic and administrative path of Sovietization, the

4
Ben Fowkes, Eastern Europe 1945-1969: From Stalinism to Stagnation (London: Pearson
Education Ltd., 2000), p. 24
5
Vilem Precan, “Dimensions of the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1967–1970,” Europe-Asia
Studies, Vol. 60, No. 10, (Routledge, December 2008), p. 1663
6
Study Prepared for U.S. Army Intelligence, “Hungary: Resistance Activities and Potentials,”
January 1956 Source: U.S. Army Military History Institute Pennsylvania, Carlisle Barracks
in (ed) Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne, Janos M. Rainer, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A
History in Documents (Budapest : Central European University Press, 2002), p. 88
10
 party’s rule grew systematically and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist

Party, Matyas Rakosi adopted Stalin’s concept of the “enemy of the people”. The Security

Police exercised terror and, the purges and show trials against both party and non-party

elements, along with the deportations of “reactionaries.”

The most important cases in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were the political trials,

which would change the nature of passive resistance and would transform it into public

disturbance, intellectual dissidence and political factionalism. Two political trials and

executions, Laszlo Rajk in Hungary and Rudolf Slansky in Czechoslovakia would be the main

figures of discussion, symbols of rehabilitation process, limits of de-Stalinization and would

signal sincerity of the leaders in conducting reforms. They were sacrificed according to

Stalin’s purifying directives and anti-Yugoslav campaigns. The Central Leadership of the

Hungarian Working People’s Party on “Cadre Policy work” assumed that the class enemy had

fundamentally infiltrated the party from the leading bodies down to the branches. From this

assumption it naturally followed that seeking the enemy in the ranks of the party was the

guiding principle of work with cadres.7

Laszlo Rajk, the Hungarian Communist leader, as Minister of the Interior, was

instrumental in achieving Communist domination in Hungary. It was a surprise for many

when Rajk was suddenly relieved of his duties and given less weighty post of Minister of

Foreign Affairs on August 3, 1948. The date is significant: five weeks earlier the Cominform
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excluded Yugoslavia from its ranks and Rajk was known to have entertained friendly relations

with his Yugoslav comrades.8 The estrangement of Tito and Stalin in 1948, together with the

growing Cold War tensions, led to the Soviet Union’s imposition of even greater orthodoxy

and uniformity in the Eastern European “satellites.” Rakosi participated with exemplary vigor

7
Janos Berecz, 1956 Counter-Revolution in Hungary-Words and Weapons- (Budapest:
Akadémia Kiado, 1986) p. 34
8
Ferenc A. Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary, Nationalism versus Communism
(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 60
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 in the ensuing area-wide campaign against alleged Titoists.9 Laszlo Rajk was arrested as a in

May 1949 and forced to confess in the course of his well-arranged trial that he had conspired

with Tito to overthrow the Hungarian communist regime, murder Rakosi and his associates,

and attempted to restore capitalism in Hungary with the help of the “imperialists.”10 A storm

of arrests and trials based on false charges aimed to purify and provide hegemony of

Muscovites against indigenous Communists followed in the wake of the Rajk case.

Czechoslovak Stalinism was also characterized by political trials and executions

starting from 1950s. The secretary general of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf

Slansky, and thirteen codefendants confessed to crimes of high treason against the Prague

government, espionage on behalf of the west, and sabotage of the socialist economy. Eleven

were executed.11 The most important difference between Slansky and Rajk trials was that

twelve of the victims of Czechoslovak trials were Jewish. 12 According to Skilling, the

President of Czechoslovakia, Klement Gottwald showed most strikingly his subservience to

Soviet will and his apparent impulse to destroy his own handwork, the communist party and

its prestige. 13 The trials were more than imitation of earlier trials in the Soviet Union. Rather,

the trial process was an instrument to discredit the Czechoslovak national path to socialism.

Furthermore, Stalin wished to eliminate plurality and diversity within his empire and to

impose the Soviet model on the other communist-ruled states. Gottwald allowed and directed

the execution of his co-workers, who helped him by preparation and implementation
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Czechoslovak policies and road to socialism. So, he condemned and liquidated his own

9
Bennett Kovrig, “Hungary,” in Communism in Eastern Europe, ed. Teresa Rakowska-
Harmstone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 91
10
Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary Nationalism versus Communism, p. 61. See also George
Mikes, The Hungarian Revolution (London : Andre Deutsch Limited, 1957), p. 44
11
Igor Lukes, “The Rudolf Slansky Affair: New Evidence,” Slavic Review, Vol. 58, No. 1
(The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1999), p. 160
12
Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Communism in Eastern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984), p. 120
13
H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1976), p. 388.
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 creation. On the other hand, Karel Kaplan, who had been placed in charge of research for the

Piller Commission, emphasized:

As in the Rajk affair, the trial was produced by the “Cold War,” the division of the
world into two camps, and the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the bloc. Kaplan
indicated that the conditions created an atmosphere of tension in the communist world
and led to the appeal for “caution and vigilance,” the demand for absolute unity, and
the adoption of more militant policies. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
adopted harsher policies at home, including severe measures against farmers and
tradesmen, the establishment of forced labor camps and trials of non-communists.14

Kaplan connected events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as waves of suppression.

The trials in Hungary and other people’s democracies served as a model and a warning, and in

fact led to direct pressure from Rakosi for action against certain Czechs and Slovaks whose

names had come up in the trial of Laszlo Rajk. This in turn led to the introduction of Soviet

advisers in October 1949, and to the search for “a Czechoslovak Rajk.” 15 He also stresses the

ethno-religious dimension of the trials in Czechoslovakia. The party started campaigns against

Slovak nationalists and Jews. The latter was related in some degree to the rise of the campaign

against Zionism by the world communist movement. Gustav Husak commented that the

Soviet leaders considered bourgeois nationalism to be the Slovak parallel of Titoism and other

forms of the “nationalist danger.”16 Therefore, it was necessary to eliminate leaders behind the

Slovak Uprising. With the influence of trials, Slovakia was subordinated under Prague

centralism.
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14
See Kaplan, Nova mysl, no. 6 (1968), pp. 786-90; no. 7 (1968), pp. 925-33; no. 8 (1968), p.
1061, as quoted in Skilling, ibid. 389
15
Ibid.
16
Skilling, p. 388.
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 SECTION 2: DE-STALINIZATION IN HUNGARY AND
CZECHOSLOVAKIA

2.1: A Soviet Experiment in Hungary: Imre Nagy

The homogeneity and participation in Hungary was an illusion, because political

participation was compulsory and ritualistic and the non-existence of opposition parties

strengthened this illusionary unity of the regime. In addition to the frustration of police terror,

trials and executions, the communist regime had been experiencing difficulties because of the

inefficiencies and dogmatic application of the new command economy and the forced

reorientation of Hungarian trade toward the Soviet bloc. Bennett Kovrig indicates:

The intensive development of heavy industry and the collectivization of agriculture

created disastrous consequences: Forced industrialization brought a massive influx of
new workers to urban areas, where the already critical housing shortage was alleviated
by the deportation of “class enemies” to the country-side. The brutal collectivization
campaign and increasingly heavy levies on farmers only alienated the peasantry,
leading to declining productivity. 17

The tensions due to strikes and demonstrations in Hungary, Berlin Uprising, the Pilsen riots in

Czechoslovakia and Stalin’s death made the Soviet “collective leadership” cautious and

sensitive.

Less than five weeks later after the elections, Rakosi was called to Moscow. The

Soviet authorities, led by Georgii Malenkov and Lavrentii Beria told Rakosi that they felt
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indisposed because of Rakosi’s “high-handed and domineering style” in office, which had led

to countless “mistakes and crimes.” 18 Rakosi was accused of abusing socialist legacy by

taking advantage of his dominant position in Hungarian society. The Kremlin ordered Rakosi

to relinquish his prime ministerial duties to Imre Nagy but retain the responsibilities of the

17
Kovrig, p. 92
18
Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland:
Reassessments and New Findings,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Sage
Publications, Ltd, 1998), p. 175
14
 Party Secretary. The Soviet decision created a dual leadership, accelerated factionalism in

Hungarian Communist Party and would ultimately damage the authority of the party. Vali

specified:

The Moscow-tolerated conflict between two Hungarian leaders – the support of Nagy,
the reprimand of Rakosi without his liquidation – signified the existing rivalry existing
in the Soviet Presidium. The equilibrium within the Soviet Presidium determined the
consequences for Hungary: Rakosi was blamed, but never dropped and Imre Nagy was
praised and encouraged but never given the means of enforcing his program. 19

A veteran Communist and Muscovite, Nagy gave momentum to Hungarian politics

and society after his appointment to prime ministry. His “New Course” envisaged a new

economic policy, purification of the party and compensation for the crimes of the past. He

condemned the previous Five Year Plans and blamed former leadership explicitly for the

deterioration of the standard of living.

First of all, he slowed down the expansion of heavy industry and gradually stopped the

collectivization of farms. Therefore, collective farm membership fell by nearly 40 percent and

investments were redirected to light and consumer industries. 20 The standard of living

improved; many goods which had disappeared from the market, reappeared anew; internees

and deportees were set free and private enterprise was allowed again on a small scale.21

Secondly, he stood up for all intellectual society, former dissidents or conformists, and

criticized the purges, unlawful administrative methods and violent measures of the current

figures in the party. Most communist political prisoners, including Kadar, were released.
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Nagy’s attacks on party officers, their actions and bureaucratic excesses, the limited

pluralism and relaxation in society had been annoying Rakosi and his colleagues. In the

beginning, Rakosi held a moderate position on Nagy’s “New Course.” However, he did not

neglect the opportunities to attack Nagy and followed a cautious approach. Molnar indicated

19
Vali p. 159
20
Kovrig p. 92
21
George Mikes, The Hungarian Revolution, (London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1957), p. 60
15
 that in public, Rakosi and his supporters pretended to be conciliatory or even in favor of

Nagy’s innovations. Yet in secret, they continued to block them, going as far as to encourage

the opposition of the party apparatus, which was completely outside Nagy’s control.22

The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, had

gradually eclipsed Prime Minister Malenkov, enabling the Communist Party of the Soviet

Union to regain its pre-dominant status in Soviet politics. Khrushchev sought to reinforce his

victory by prodding the Eastern European countries to halt their New Courses and to give

renewed emphasis to the “leading role” of their communist parties.23 Khrushchev was

uncomfortable, because the leadership in Hungary seemed to realign with “detrimental”

forces in society. In addition to the transformation under Khrushchev leadership, Nagy’s

efforts on the revitalization of the Popular Front and cultural liberalization resulted in first the

impeachment and then the deprivation of his membership in the Politburo. Nagy came to be

charged with “right-wing opportunist deviation” by the press and his adversaries.

Soon, Nagy was forced to resign from the Presidency of the Popular Front, gave up his

seat in Parliament and was finally expelled from the party. George Mikes pointed out that

Nagy failed to remember one basic command of the master: destroy your enemies. 24 Molnar

emphasized Nagy’s need to have at his disposal the mechanism of administration, the

ministers, the prefects, the directors of state enterprises and the police. 25 However, the state

administration, duplicated by a network of party officials, received its orders from the party’s
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central committee, which remained hostile to Nagy’s initiatives. The Politburo and the Central

Secretariat was composed of long-standing Stalinists such as Rakosi and Gero. Furthermore,

22
Miklos Molnar, Budapest 1956: A History of the Hungarian Revolution, trans. Jennetta
Ford (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971), p. 32
23
Kramer, p.175
24
Mikes p. 59
25
Molnar p. 41
16
 the political police force was always subordinate to the party and since Nagy could not take

whole control, the state security forces stayed loyal to Stalinists.

According to Kemp, Nagy was not advocating a departure from communism. Rather,

his argument was a call for restoration of socialist values. He wanted to base relations

between communist states on well-established Marxist-Leninist principles. Kemp points out

that main problem was the incongruence between the political culture and the political

system. The system could not be legitimated and this incongruence would eventually provoke

crisis.26 Nagy could not establish his “New Course” permanently in the authoritarian system.

He had to eliminate the opposition and strengthen his cadres to maneuver freely.

2.2: Nagy on the New Course

The legitimacy of the Hungarian Communist Party became more questionable after

Nagy’s dismissal. According to Vali, Rakosi was aware of the problematic situation and

wanted to force Nagy to enter his resignation, even wishing to press him into a full recantation

of his errors and self-criticism. 27 However, Nagy preferred to be discharged from office,

because he knew if he were to resign, his popularity would decline. His determined and

inflexible stance provided him support from different sectors in Hungarian society. Thus, he

became the symbol of frustrated masses and reform-minded people.

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After his expulsion, he continued his passive resistance in the intellectual and political

realm. Nagy tried to rid himself of the charges against him, such as being a right-wing deviant

politician and to justify his “New Course” by writing his ideas and conceptualizations in his

“thesis” “In Defense of the New Course.” He adamantly denied that he was a nationalist or a

chauvinist. According to Hugh Seton-Watson, Nagy stressed that he had always favored, and

26
Kemp, pp. 141-143
27
Vali, p. 163
17
 actively pleaded for, friendship between Hungary and the Soviet Union, and between

Hungary and her territorial neighbors. At the same time he proudly asserted his devotion to

his own country and his Hungarian patriotism.28

In my opinion, patriotism was always a problematic, vague and tamed jargon in

communism. Walter Kemp describes patriotism as allegiance to a fairly well-defined existing

or historical territory, patria, the motherland, one’s ancestral homeland. Patriotism, therefore,

means devotion to the interests of a particular state, whereas nationalism means devotion to

the interests of a particular national community. 29 Therefore, communist regimes promoted

the idea of socialist patriotism, which would not allow any national or indigenous deviations.

However, socialist patriotism was not local and innate and could not represent the signifying

national political culture. Defining himself as Hungarian socialist patriot was a political and

popular statement. Here, socialist patriots indicates his devotion to true Marxist and Leninist

tenets and Nagy points out his allegiance to his nation by emphasizing Hungary.

Nagy blamed Stalin’s, and also Rakosi’s, monopolization of explaining Marxism-

Leninism based on the cult of the individual, which inescapably brought about dogmatism, the

crippling of courageous and pioneering theoretical work and disregard of the particular

characteristics of the various countries. 30 Nagy aimed to justify his statements by quoting

Lenin’s statement “all nations will eventually arrive at socialism but they will not arrive there

in a completely identical fashion.” He strengthened his ideas by paraphrasing the concept of

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Panch Sheel, or Five Principles, which was declared by India and the People’s Republic of

China in 1954. Nagy was demanding mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and

sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in each other’s internal affairs,

equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. In “In Defense of the New Course” he

28
Frederick A. Praeger, Imre Nagy On Communism: In Defense of the New Course, with a
foreword by Hugh Seton-Watson (New York, Inc. 1957), p. xxii
29
Kemp p. 7
30
Praeger, p. 5
18
 expressed that these five principles would strengthen the socialist camp due to mutual

understanding and close cooperation. Then, he indicated that the mutual coexistence and

noninterference between states would also lead independent national policies by respecting

national sovereignty. National independence and sovereignty were basic requirements of

national unity, creation of national loyalty and legitimacy of the party. Actually, Nagy’s

demands were not limited to the five principles. His description of national sovereignty,

which demanded further active coexistence and neutrality, was in conflict with Soviet’s

sphere of influence and the meaning of Warsaw Pact. Nagy stated:

The most practicable plan, seemingly, is the active coexistence of progressive

democratic socialist or similar countries with those other countries having a different
system, through a coordinated foreign policy and through cooperation against the
policies of the power groups, through neutrality or active coexistence. This path is
made easier for Hungary by its geographical location through its neighboring states,
neutral Austria, and countries building socialism, among them the Soviet Union, and
neighboring Yugoslavia, which stands on the principle of active co-existence. 31

It was obvious that he was thinking of independence from Soviet domination or at least equal

footing in mutual agreements and arrangements in economy and politics. However, in the

context of a “satellite country” such arguments were high risky. His “unorthodox” ideas were

not the sole reasons of Hungarian Revolution, but it gave the movement momentum and hope

for the society.

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2.3: The Impact of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech on Hungary and Czechoslovakia

Stalin’s death in 1953 gave way to a power struggle in the Kremlin between L. Beria,

V. Molotov, G. Malenkov and N. Khrushchev, from which, by 1955, Khrushchev had

emerged as the leader. At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet

Union in 1956, he condemned Stalin’s “cult of personality” in his secret speech “On the

Personality Cult and its Consequences:”

31
Ibid., p. 33
19
 At present we are concerned with a question which has immense importance for the
Party now and in the future – [we are concerned] with how the Stalin cult gradually
grew, the cult which became at a certain specific stage the source of a whole series of
exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party principles, of Party democracy, of
revolutionary legality. 32

Khrushchev accused Stalin and his actions resulted in the “Great Purges,” which traumatized

and alienated all people in the Soviet Union and in the other communist states. Khrushchev

stated that Stalin forestalled the doctrines of Marxism and Leninism, the party apparatus and

communist individuals. Therefore, he supposed that he had the right to take all the actions and

suppressive policies due to his infallible character and cult. Another fault was Stalin’s

introduction of the notion “enemy of the people,” which could identify every communist and

non-communist citizen as the enemy of the people. Stalin violated party norms of the

collective leadership and aggressively attacked every single person, who had disagreed

Stalin’s decisions. His decisions on purges, deportations and executions resulted in a situation

of uncertainty, suspicion and distrust. Thus, Khrushchev initiated a series of strategic and

doctrinal changes. He decided to reverse the absolutist and oppressive regime, started de-

Stalinization process and wanted to reform whole system in Soviet Union and its relations

with the communist states.

Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956 had an impact on Polish and Hungarian politics,

but not immediately in Czechoslovakia. The side-effects of the speech first started to arise

among communist leaders and their rank and file members, who were confused in the
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beginning because the speech was neither accompanied by any clear policy directives, nor any

indications of what promotions or demotions the Soviet leadership might desire among the

Eastern European leaderships. 33 Rakosi and Novotny had evaluated the speech and tasks

32
Thomas P. Whitney, ed., Khrushchev Speaks: Selected Speeches, Articles, and Press
Conferences, 1949-1961 (New York: The University of Michigan Press, 1963) p. 207
33
Terry Cox, ed., Challenging Communism in Eastern Europe: 1956 and its Legacy (London:
Routledge, 2008) p. ix
20
 differently due to the distinct economic, political and social atmosphere in Hungary and

Czechoslovakia.

Although Rakosi’s character and actions stood closer to Stalin’s personality cult,

Rakosi had to take more actions and revisions than Novotny in 1956. He immediately

submitted his report to the Hungarian Central Committee on March 12 and 13, 1956. Vali

expressed that Rakosi displayed no inhibition in declaring that the “cult of personality is alien

to Marxism” and that “the principle of collective leadership is an elementary affair for a

proletarian Party” – thus quoting Mikoyan. 34 The efforts in the implementation of collective

leadership and intra-party democracy for strengthening Socialist legality were illusionary in

Hungary, because the “Hungarian Stalin” was still leading the country. Vali concluded:

It was easy for Rakosi to say that “collective leadership” existed in Hungary, but it
was harder to find people to believe it – at least so long as the Hungarian dictator ruled
supreme over the party and government in Hungary. Nor could Rakosi convince
anyone that internal party democracy had been firmly established, that illegalities had
ceased, or that “control” over the Security Police had been firmly secured. 35

The situation in Czechoslovakia in 1956 was slightly different. The economy and

living standards were better than in Hungary and the party leadership did not experience

strong ebb and flows like Hungary did with Imre Nagy. Besides, the political atmosphere and

social environment in Poland and Hungary continued to deteriorate and there was less public

pressure for reform in Czechoslovakia. So, the Czechoslovak regime kept tight control and

did not introduce any reforms. Moreover, Antonin Novotny was aware that denouncing
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Stalinism would have meant denouncing his own actions. Thus, the Czechoslovak leadership

prevented the formation of adverse groups in society and managed to maintain the intra-party

stability.

Only in the early 1960s did problems with the centrally planned economic system

become fully apparent in Czechoslovakia. This coincided with Khrushchev’s second attack on

34
Vali, p. 216
35
Ibid., p. 217
21
 Stalinism at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in

October 1961.36 Contrary to Khrushchev’s expectations, Antonin Novotny became the

President of Czechoslovakia by first protecting his position as the First Secretary of the

Czechoslovak Communist Party. Khrushchev ordered him to implement the process of de-

Stalinization, but the concentration of power in the hands of one leader made even harder for

Novotny to accept his errors and crimes of the past. Furthermore, Novotny and his officers

were aware of the fact that an acceleration of de-Stalinization in Prague might easily produced

crises comparable to those in Budapest and Warsaw and may have threatened their position.

Novotny adopted a clever line of symbolic de-Stalinization, which was designed to

associate himself verbally with current Soviet policy and to ward off criticism of his own

responsibility during his eight years in power. 37 While he was admitting that the personality

cult had continued in his administration, however, he represented his policies and actions as a

rupture from old leadership. He cleared himself by targeting Gottwald as the main source of

the personality cult and justified his regime by confirming Gottwald’s actions: The liquidation

of the Slansky group had been the first step in the elimination of Stalinist methods. The de-

Stalinization continued in Prague but in a superficial way: The Prague monument of Stalin

was removed and Gottwald’s embalmed body would be buried.38

In 1963, Novotny felt the need to be approved by the current Soviet leadership and

needed the loyalty of reform-minded members within his own Central Committee. He set up a
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new commission of inquiry into the Slansky trial and other associated political show trials,

under the direction of Drahomir Kolder, a regional party secretary in Ostrava who owed his

36
Laura Cashman, “Remembering 1948 and 1968: Reflections on Two Pivotal Years in
Czech and Slovak History,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 60, No. 10 (Routledge, Dec 2008) p.
1648
37
Skilling, p. 39
38
Mary Heimann, “The Scheming Apparatchik of the Prague Spring,” Europe-Asia Studies,
Vol. 60, No. 10 (Routledge, Dec 2008), p. 1720
22
 position to Novotny’s patronage.39 In February 1963, the Kolder Commission reported to the

Presidium that the Slansky trial and the other show trials of the 1950s were constructed by the

use of Stalin’s “confession” techniques. The state had fabricated “the anti-state conspiracy,”

stigmatized the victims as “the enemy of the peoples” and triggered the political lynching.

Skilling indicated that apart from Slansky and some of his fellow victims, the

responsibility for the trials and the breach of “socialist legality” was placed on Gottwald and

the entire political leadership. The report blamed Stalin for his methods and doctrines, Beria’s

security officers, and Rakosi for direct pressure on the Czechoslovak leaders. 40 Meanwhile

none of this was revealed to the general public, which was pressuring for a complete and

systematic implementation of reforms and rehabilitation of the victims. The congresses of

writers and journalists in April and May 1963 were dominated by this theme and provided a

forum bitter denunciation of the Stalinist past and the slowness of changes in policy.

A prominent Slovak, Alexander Dubcek was a member of the Kolder Commission,

which was more cautious in the matter of the Slovak show trials of so-called “Slovak

bourgeois nationalists.” Kulturny zivot, the weekly journal of the Party-approved Union of

Slovak Writers, was suddenly allowed to go beyond the bounds of censorship then permitted

in the Czech-speaking regions of the country. In no time, even Pravda, the official

mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Slovakia began to press for a reinvestigation of the

“Slovak bourgeois nationalist” trials. Novotny had no choice, sacked three remaining
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Gottwald appointments that he could no longer afford to save, and to call for a new

commission, known as the Barnabitky Commission, to reopen the files on the Slovak political

trials.41 Dubcek’s attachment to the Slovak Party had safeguarded the continuity of the

rehabilitation process.

39
Ibid., p. 1722
40
Skilling, p. 48
41
Mary Heimann, p. 1724
23
 The rehabilitation process had two important consequences: First, the Slovak public

was mobilized and had displayed their will to administer justice and fight against Prague’s

centralist and historical discrimination. The second consequence was Alexander Dubcek’s

elevating personality and his promotion to become the First Secretary of the Communist Party

of Slovakia in May 1963. However, the success of the commission was limited, because the

leadership continued to cover up the truth about the trials. None of the report’s conclusions

concerning illegal methods or the analysis of responsibility was revealed. Nor was the judicial

exoneration coupled with political rehabilitation in all cases. Slansky and others were still

treated as guilty of serious failings and were not readmitted to the party. Moreover, only a few

hundred of the leading party victims had been exonerated by name, and thousands of other

had not been publicly absolved of charges of serious crimes or compensated in any way. 42

Neither top politicians nor lower administrative workers such as judges, security forces and

investigators who were involved and responsible for the trials of the fifties were charged by

anything.

2.4: The Reform and its Limits in the Era of Novotny

The situation got worse for Novotny after the “cosmetic changes” in the regime. The

economy was crippled because of the failure of the Soviet model and centralist tendencies.
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Due to a lack of compatibility between promise and reality, the Communist Party of

Czechoslovakia lacked legitimacy. 43 Slow paced rehabilitation, growing Slovak discontent,

open dissent of the intellectuals, the political apathy of the youth, a muffled criticism of

42
Skilling, p. 49
43
Manfred Spieker, “Crises in Eastern Europe since 1956,” Studies in Soviet Thought, Vol.
32, No. 3 (Springer Page, Oct., 1986), p. 197
24
 foreign policy and resistive tendencies among students contributed to the sapping of the

foundations of the system. 44

Czechoslovak writers had been calling for a “European context” – a return to the
civilized culture sphere, corresponding to the history and traditions of the
Czechoslovak people. At the Fourth Congress in Prague from June 27-29, 1967, they
expressed their sovereign and independent attitudes – on issues ranging from Prague’s
role in the Middle East to amending the law of the press to allow freedom of speech –
as well as their determination to regain their convictions in what the writer Milan
Kundera called their “responsibility for the very existence of their nation.” 45

Novotny, instead of reconciliation, that would have cooled down the tensions and

opened the way for reformers, moved to tighten his control and tried to reinstall the concept of

“enemy of the peoples” by reporting the rise of the “anti-socialist” activities. The writers were

condemned by the Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Jiri Hendrych, “for the

presentation of views that run directly contrary to the state, socialism, and even national
46
interests of our people.” Several writers were expelled from the Party, while others were

reprimanded and subjected to disciplinary action. Furthermore, the Writers’ Union was

stripped of its weekly journal, Literarni noviny, the tribune of social criticism and revisionist

views. As in all cases in Eastern Europe, starting with de-Stalinization, the oppressive

measures had deteriorated and the situation gave birth to mass actions.

The student demonstration, which was about the ill conditions in the Strahov

dormitory, was suppressed harshly by the Czechoslovak police. Afterwards, several hundred

students took to the streets in a spontaneous protest on 31 October 1967.47 After marching
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close to Prague Castle, where the Central Committee was in session, their chants acquired an

increasingly political nature, and they were brutally dispersed by police at the bottom of

44
Skilling, p. 46
45
Jaromir Navratil, ed., The Prague Spring 1968 A National Security Archive Documents
Reader (Prague: CEU Press, 1998), p. 5
46
See “Proceedings of the 4th Czechoslovak Writers’ Congress, June 27-29, 1967, and a
Follow-up Resolution by the CPCz CC Plenum, September 1967”, as quoted in (ed) Jaromir
Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Prague:
CEU Press Prague, 1998)
47
Precan, p. 1664
25
 Neruda Street. Several were badly injured and retreating students resumed their protest

outside their hostels, prompting another police assault.48 The intense reaction of the police had

irritated and outraged even the conformist students. Student leaders demanded an

investigation into who was responsible for the police terror and they threatened to stage

another march if the inquiry proved unsatisfactory. The growing malaise in the society made

Novotny even more paranoid, and so he expelled many university student leaders, while many

independent student organizations were disbanded and the expellees were drafted into the

army.

Novotny’s image had been deteriorating since the start of the reform and rehabilitation

process. He could not continue reforms in accordance with the growing social, cultural,

political and economic demands of the Czech and Slovak society. He only wanted to appease

the reformists in the party in order to secure intra-party cohesion. His half-hearted initiative in

the rehabilitation process triggered discontent of the officers in the party started to question

his legitimacy.

The fragmentation of the treasured cohesion of the party manifested itself at a Central
Committee Plenum held from October 30-31, 1967. The criticism raised at the Plenum
was directed above all against Novotny, and against his concentration of power as first
secretary, president of the republic, supreme commander of the armed forces and
supreme commander of a kind of private army of the Czechoslovak Communist Party,
the People’s Militia.49

Alexander Dubcek, the first secretary of the Slovak Communist Party, angered
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Novotny by stating during the Plenum that the government and party tasks must be carefully

separated, especially in central leadership and management. Dubcek also called on the

Czechoslovak Communist Party to deepen intra-party democracy, and readdress the top-down

control that the centralized Central Committee leadership exercised over almost every aspect

48
Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997) p. 56
49
Navratil, p. 6
26
 of Czechoslovak life. 50 Again, the Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party accused

Dubcek of advocating “bourgeois nationalism.” According to the hard-liners in Prague,

Dubcek was falsely motivated by his local interests. The October Plenum showed that the

unrest in society had also spread into the ranks of the party.

Like Matyas Rakosi, Novotny sought the support of the Soviet leadership as his last

chance to undermine his opponents. Without informing any of his party colleagues, Novotny

invited Brezhnev for a brief, unofficial visit to Prague in early December. Clearly, Novotny

hoped that Brezhnev’s visit, and presumed endorsement, would help him reconsolidate power.

But that proved not to be the case. Brezhnev acted diplomatically. Over a period of eighteen

straight hours, he spoke to almost all the members of the Presidium individually and learned

that Novotny was widely unpopular.51 In the end, he attended a Presidium meeting on

December 9, 1967 and indicated that the problem in Czechoslovakia would have to be solved

domestically and that he would not take part in that process. According to Maud Bracke, the

Soviet unwillingness to support Novotny gave momentum to the reformist forces inside the

highest party ranks.52

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50
“Speeches by Alexander Dubcek, and Antonin Novotny at the Central Committee Plenum,
October 30-31, 1967” in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security
Archive Documents Reader, 1998 , p.13
51
“Remarks by Leonid Brezhnev at a Meeting of Top CPCz Officials, in Prague, December 9,
1967 File for A. Novotny; Vondrova & Navratil, vol. 1” in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague
Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, 1998 , p.18
52
Maud Bracke, Which Socialism, Whose Détente? West European Communism and the
Czechoslovak crisis 1968 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007) p. 136
27
 SECTION 3: HUNGARY 1956

3.1: Mutual Interaction: Poland and Hungary in 1956

The political atmosphere in Poland has a special place in evaluating Hungarian

Revolution. The process in 1956, especially triggered by the Twentieth Party Soviet Congress,

was by no means unidirectional. Instead, the events in Poland in 1956 set off a chain reaction,

a self-perpetuating, mutually reinforcing cycle of actions and reactions. Events in Poland such

as the Poznan Revolt and “Polish October” sparked reactions in Hungary and those reactions

of the Hungarians then influenced the Polish leadership and population.53 As in Hungary, a

division existed between Polish Muscovites and indigenous communists. Poland was

experiencing, on the one hand, the impact of de-Stalinization; on the other hand, the change of

the leadership. Boleslaw Bierut had died of a heart attack during the Twentieth Congress in

Moscow and another Stalinist Edward Ochab took over Bierut’s position of the First Secretary

of the Communist Party.

The Poznan riots arose from national and international political disorder. The

conditions of the workers in Poland’s fourth largest city, Poznan, were deteriorating. On

Saturday 23 June workers of the Poznan Stalin Works locomotive plant met and decided to
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send a delegation to Warsaw to persuade the central authorities to meet economic demands,

including a 20 per cent wage increase. By 28 June the delegation had still not received an

answer from the authorities about the wage increase, and rumors were also spreading that this

delegation had been arrested.54 Eventually, the workers assumed that the delegation had been

arrested so, the worker mass attacked the city jail, freed the prisoners, and seized weapons

53
Johanna Granville, “Hungarian and Polish Reactions to the Events of 1956: New Archival
Evidence,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 53, No. 7 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., Nov., 2001), p.1051
54
Ibid.,1053
28
 from the guards. The anarchy accelerated when the workers attacked the radio station and the

building of the District Office Security, where many people had died because of the order to

open fire. The demonstration had spread over other Polish cities and escalated into large anti-

government riots.

The Ochab regime dealt with the riots, but had to dismiss several senior Stalinist

officials and exposed economic failures. Demands for reformist Wladyslaw Gomulka's re-

admittance to a top leadership position increased after the Poznan Revolt, because Polish

society was in need of economic policy changes. The Polish leadership gradually grew

sympathetic toward Gomulka’s restoration to power after the Poznan events. Consequently,

the majority of the Polish leadership backed by the Army and the Internal Security Corps

brought Gomulka as First Secretary on October 19.55 Gomulka’s takeover was not approved

by the Soviet leaders. The Soviet leadership on 19 October ordered its troops to advance

toward Warsaw. Stationed in northern and western Poland, their purpose was undoubtedly to

intimidate the Polish leadership. Polish troops loyal to Gomulka responded by taking up

defensive positions around the capital. 56 The decision done by authorities was so determined

that even the threat of Soviet military intervention and the unscheduled visit of the Soviet

delegation, including Khrushchev, Molotov, Mikoyan, and Kaganovich, could not deter the

Poles. 57 After intense debates, the responsible and collective action of Polish leadership

convinced Soviet leaders to handle the events on their own.

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The Polish leader Gomulka cooled the public pressure with a genuine attempt to make
the national culture part of his official policy. When he replaced Ochab, he
immediately made several concessions to the masses. He reconciled marginalized
figures with the communist regime, made peace with the Catholic Church and released
Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland, who had been under house arrest
for three years.58

55
Vali, pp. 262-263
56
Granville, p. 1053
57
Vali, p. 263
58
Kemp, p. 145
29
 Furthermore, Gomulka needed to soothe anti-Soviet feelings, so he removed the Soviet

Polish-born General Konstantin Rokossowski and replaced him by the Pole Marian

Spychalski. With the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the dissolution of the Committee for

Public Security, terror was eased in Polish society.

Gomulka did not want to deviate from the Soviet principles. On the contrary, Nagy’s

“New Course” led him to rejecting anything that restricted or violated his country’s interests

as defined in terms of building Communism, which in turn led him to adopt a position which

was not only non-Stalinist, but even non-Leninist, and much like Tito’s. 59 Simultaneous to the

developments in Poland, people in Hungary were experiencing a paradox: On the one hand,

the Hungarian Communist Party resolution declared that the Poznan provocation to be a

warning to every Hungarian worker and called for every honest patriot firmly to oppose

attempts at trouble-making and to help the unfettered development of those forces which, on

the basis of Marxism-Leninism and in the spirit of the Twentieth Congress, lead the People’s

Democracy to new successes. 60 On the other hand, many reformist, non-communist politician,

workers, students and intellectuals were fiercely supporting the developments in Poland.

The embodiment of Hungarian dissident and intellectual force was the Petofi Circle,

which was first no more than a small informal group of like-minded younger Communist

intellectuals. Paul Zinner emphasizes its potential significance as an organ of opposition,

which would surpass the Writers’ Union and attract intellectuals from diverse social
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stratifications.

It became an active force and accelerated the pressure for reforms. The Petofi Circle
sponsored thirteen debates and reunions between March 17 and June 27. For instance,
the debate on June 27 attracted a crowd of 6,000 people. The reunions brought
together former members of university students' organization from the immediate post-
war period, the people's colleges and veteran fighters of the workers movement who

59
Ibid., p. 146
60
“Central Committee Statement, 30 June 1956. National Communism and Popular Revolt: A
Selection of Documents (New York, 1956)” as quoted in ed. Terry Cox Challenging
Communism in Eastern Europe/1956 and its Legacy (London: Routledge 2008), p. 82
30
 held a joint rally with young intellectuals. Because of the broad representation and
popularity of the intellectual circle, Muscovites in the Party were forced to consider
the will to reform. Moreover, intellectuals had reached important layers of the
communist party membership and even functionaries in various institutions. 61

In July 1956, Rakosi was forced to retire. In contrast to Ochab in Poland, who assisted the

reformer Gomulka, Rakosi had promoted Erno Gero, a like-minded hard-liner. 62

For Gero and Soviet leadership, the Petofi Circle was a crucial social and political

factor, which deserved urgent attention. However, their approach had diverged in the

beginning. The Soviet Presidium considered the Petofi Circle as a dangerous formation in the

Hungarian society:

The Petofi Circle was “an ideological Poznan without gunshots.” Although they were
mostly intellectuals and students, and supporters of Imre Nagy, he warned that there
were no direct counter-revolutionary attacks in Poznan. Thus, the absence of counter-
revolutionary slogans in the Petofi Circle should not reassure the Hungarian
communists.63

On the other hand, Gero described the intellectual circle as a second leading center, which

was challenging the sole political center, the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist

Party.64 His awareness signified that Gero, as the newly elected First Secretary of the Party,

aimed to follow a moderate way. However, people knew that Gero was chosen by the Soviet

authorities without attending the society’s needs. It was obvious, as a hard-liner, that Gero

would persecute his predecessor’s policies.

From the start, the Soviet Presidium’s choices were contradictory: on the one hand,
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they delegitimized the regime by removing the omnipotent figure, who could suppress the

frustrated masses and maintain order. On the other hand, the Soviet leadership did not allow a

reformer to lead Hungary and the Party, although the Hungarian people wanted to see Nagy as

61
Paul E. Zinner, “Revolution in Hungary: Reflections on the Vicissitudes of a Totalitarian
System,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, Feb 1959),
pp.22-23
62
Krzysztof Persak, “The Polish-Soviet Confrontation in 1956 and the Attempted Soviet
Military Intervention in Poland,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 58, no. 8 (Dec 2006), p. 120
63
Granville, p.1058
64
Kovrig, p. 93
31
 their leader. Incomprehension of the future, indecision on the leadership and misapprehension

of social and political currents resulted in the disastrous mistake.

In addition to the Soviet leaders’ mistake, Gero left the country alone and

implemented inappropriate policies. Gero wanted or forced to follow Khrushevian strategy,

reconciliation with Yugoslavia. Gero, completed the process by sending the letter to Tito. In

the letter, Gero apologizes for the problems caused by the Laszlo Rajk trial and the fierce

propaganda campaign against Yugoslavia, in which Rakosi had played a leading part.

Apparently preoccupied with the unfolding Suez crisis, Tito’s official response came only on

September 11, but significantly, he raised no objections to starting negotiations. The talks

eventually took place between October 15 and 22 in Belgrade, but their significance was

immediately overtaken by the revolution, which broke out on October 23.65

Gero kept his promise by allowing the ceremonial reburial of Laszlo Rajk and three

other Communist victims of terror on October 6. Gero had in his mind that the reburial would

not damage his authority, rather strengthen his leadership. He thought he did not belong to the

political circle, which was the source of all wrong-doing. Besides, he did not predict that

200,000 frustrated people would attend Rajk’s reburial. The social disorder and frustration

were not eligible for people to follow a logical understanding of Gero’s policy outcomes.

Kemp emphasizes that by reburying Laszlo Rajk publicly the regime was acknowledging that

it had been wrong.66 Gero believed he could exclude himself from former crimes of the Party
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and he would also show that he took into account popular concerns in order to retain a sense

of legitimacy.

Obstinate insistence on conservative personalities in Hungary was maybe one of the

most important factors which had inflamed people’s resentment in Hungary. Another

65
See the “Letter from Erno Gero to Josip Broz Tito, July 19, 1956” in ed. Csaba Békés ,
Malcolm Byrne, Janos M. Rainer The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
(Budapest : Central European University Press, 2002), p. 157
66
Kemp, p. 147
32
 difference was, according to Johanna Granville, the absence of the personality cult in

Poland.67 In Hungary, there was a groundswell of hatred toward the so-called “Rakosi-Gero

clique” and Rakosi’s hegemonic personality. While Gero was busy of completing his agenda

and traveling to Belgrade looking to establish belated accommodation with Tito, agitation by

students and intellectuals took the form of manifestos. Rakosi and Gero could not realize how

fierce the transformation in the Hungarian society was. Between all of the bureaucratic and

political fights within the party leadership and the Soviet Union, the Soviet leaders were also

completely unaware of what impact Imre Nagy’s “unsuccessful premiership” had on the

Hungarian psyche.68 Motivated by the change in Polish society, the student demonstration on

23 October was highly significant in the revolutionary process. The demonstrators marched as

a symbolic gesture to the statue of the Polish General Jozef Bem – the hero of the Hungarian

Revolution of 1848-49 – chanting the slogans:

Independence based on freedom and equality! Poland shows us the way, let's follow
the Hungarian way! We're the nation of Father Bem and Kossuth, let's walk hand in
hand! Long live the Polish nation! Long live the Polish Workers' Party! Long live the
Polish-Hungarian friendship! To hell with traitor leaders! We want new leadership; we
trust in Imre Nagy! We won't stop half way, death to Stalinism! Independence,
freedom! 69

It is very important to compare the different attitudes of the Soviet leadership in regard

to the Hungarian and Polish events in order to understand the connection between Hungarian

Revolution, Prague Spring and the responses of the Soviet Presidium. The Soviet leadership
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had evolved in its experimental approaches in Eastern and Central Europe. The reaction of the

Soviet forces could have been different, but the leadership had always the same expectations:

The unity of the Warsaw Pact Members, the dependency of the communist parties on the

Soviet leadership and the leading role of the party. According to Vali, the revolutionary

character of the Polish event deviated from accepted norms of Soviet supremacy. It was a

67
Granville, p.1056.
68
Vali, p.166.
69
Granville, p. 1051.
33
 revolutionary act carried out by the Central Committee of the Polish Party, thereby violating

rules of Communist conduct set by Moscow.

It was a revolt within the Communist orbit carried out against the paramount Soviet
leadership by the local communist party organ, like a vassal state acting against the
accepted customs of vassalage. In Poland it was not the people that imposed their will
upon the government by revolutionary action, but rather the local communist party
itself that rose against the bondage imposed by Soviet authority. The Polish change,
albeit supported by the masses, was not a people’s revolution in the sense that the
Hungarian Revolution was.70

Hungary differed because people revolted both against their Hungarian Communist Party and

against Soviet hegemony. Therefore, Soviet’s political intervention in Polish Communist

Party leadership reassured the Soviet Presidium. On the contrary, the Soviet leadership had

found that they already had lost Hungarian leadership and the masses.

The reasons for the Soviet’s different approaches to Hungary and Poland had

emanated not only from mass-elite phenomenon, but rather from multiple social dynamics,

political actions, inter-state relations, international politics and personalities. First of all, the

Poznan crisis was mainly a workers' revolt caused by economic distress and the Polish

authorities were able to contain the rebellion in Poznan due to its limited goals. In contrast to

the resented workers in Poznan, the Hungarian students' demands were more political and

harder for the conservative regime to meet.71 Secondly, Ochab and his colleagues were

physically present in Poland on 28 June and thus could take action. However, Gero and his

delegates were in Yugoslavia to normalize their relations and the atmosphere had escalated in
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their absence. The demonstration would turn violent when the leadership arrived on the day of

the student rally.

Thirdly, the Polish leaders could manage the Poznan crisis on their own, without

calling in Soviet troops. The Polish military containment was prompt and efficient. On the

70
Vali, p. 263
71
Johanna Granville, “1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland?” The Slavonic and
East European Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Maney Publishing, Oct 2002), pp. 660-666
34
 contrary, the first Soviet intervention in Hungary on 23-24 October was actually an invasion

by invitation. 72 Gero requested Soviet forces and the ministries supported foreign interference

because of the inability and the inefficiency of Hungarian police and military forces. Fourthly,

the discipline and authority over Polish soldiers provided quick containment of the

revolutionary atmosphere. Granville emphasizes:

The overwhelming majority of Polish soldiers obeyed orders, yet the regular
Hungarian army units wavered and some deserted to the side of the so-called freedom
fighters. The soldiers were forbidden to open fire unless they were fired upon. Only
the Hungarian State Security Authority units could shoot unhesitatingly at the
Hungarian demonstrators.73

The disorganization and indeterminacy of the Hungarian units flamed the protesters and

demonstration.

Another difference emanated from the approaches of the leaders: In contrast to

Ochab's conciliatory attitude to the demonstrators, Erno Gero delivered a scathing radio

speech on 23 October denouncing the Hungarian demonstrators as counterrevolutionaries,

further enraging his audience.74 The main mistake committed by Hungarian leaders was that

they immediately associated demonstration, which had anti-Soviet elements, with a counter-

revolution against socialism.

Finally, the new reformist leaders of frustrated masses shaped the events in totally

different ways. Gomulka could reconcile hard-liners, the Soviet leadership and frustrated

masses. However, Nagy found himself in a different position: He had no choice other than to
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orient himself with the demands of the masses. Many newly established organs in Hungarian

society were taking initiatives without Nagy’s leadership. In my opinion, maybe the most

important factor was Nagy’s “New Course,” in which he planted the seeds of reform,

freedom, the idea of national sovereignty, multi-party system and neutrality. Gomulka acted

72
Ibid., pp. 661-668
73
Ibid., pp. 666
74
Ibid., pp. 667
35
 cautiously by following Soviet line, declared his devotion to Warsaw Pact and emphasized the

leading role of the Party.

3.2: Conceptualizing “1956”

Gero’s appointment to the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party

exacerbated the situation in Hungary. Khrushchev had tried to find the middle way by

replacing Rakosi with Gero. However, the Soviet leadership could not analyze the dynamics

and change in the Hungarian society. People were aware that Gero was anything but a

reformer. At Gero’s leadership, the Party’s power liquidated and lost its control over social

and intellectual activism. Simultaneously, the Soviet leadership kept receiving reports from its

officers telling them that the counterrevolutionary forces seized the government and society.

Instead of trying to keep order in Hungary, Gero was too busy following Khrushchev’s new

reconciliatory path with Yugoslavia. When he came back from his trip to Hungary, he found

wreckage instead of the communist party. The atmosphere in Hungary was in total disorder.

An unexpected number of people had attended Rajk’s reburial and the fervent attitude of the

people worried the authorities. The Soviet leadership increased its warnings about

counterrevolutionary activity. Therefore, Gero found himself at a position of constant defense:

There are those who intend to create a conflict between proletarian internationalism
and Hungarian patriotism…We, Communists are Hungarian patriots…Yet while we
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proclaim that we are patriots, we also categorically state that we are not
nationalists…We are patriots but at the same time we are also proletarian
internationalists. 75

Nagy’s defense on his “New Course,” Gero’s poor initiative, the continuing frustration

against Rakosi-Gero clique, and the increase in the Soviet intervention in Hungarian internal

affairs had exacerbated the legitimacy problem of the communist party. The 23 October

75
Gero's speech was aired on Radio Budapest, October 23, 1956, 18:30 hrs. See the transcript
in M. J. Lasky (ed.), The Hungarian Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1957), pp. 51-52.
36
 demonstrations were the landmark for the course of events in Hungary. People demanded the

reinstatement of Nagy to the government, the expulsion of Rakosi from the party, public trial

for Farkas and others implicated in the Stalinist outrages, the publication of foreign trade

agreements including Soviet exploitation of Hungarian uranium, the freedom of expression in

literature, and finally, the evacuation of Soviet troops.

Eventually, the peaceful demonstrations in Budapest turned into a violent fight

between Hungarian State Security officers supported by limited intervention by the Soviet

forces, and the frustrated masses. The Central Committee was forced to appoint Nagy as

Premier and Janos Kadar as First Secretary. Installed in power, however, Nagy did not act,

especially at first, like a revolutionary leader. His primary endeavor upon taking office was to

restore order and disarm the insurgents. His appeals to the fighters to lay down their arms

were fruitless, and his initial popularity declined rapidly. 76 Therefore, he understood that he

needed listen to the demands of the new rising social forces.

After a few days’ hesitation, he started to fulfill the demonstrators’ demands. Soviet

troops were withdrawn from Budapest and the internal security service was disbanded. A

multi-party system was restored and the holding of free and secret parliamentary elections

was announced.77 However, the changes in the society were too rapid, and the new civil

initiative, the revolutionary and workers’ councils spread nationwide and pressed Nagy for

far-reaching reforms. They demanded freedom of assembly, free unions, the right to strike,
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cultural and religious freedom, a democratic multi-party system, independent farming, free

choice in the formation of agricultural cooperatives, motivating self-management in economy,

elimination of police terror, political sovereignty and state neutrality. In the end, Nagy found

76
Paul Kecskemeti, “Anatomy of a Revolt,” in Eastern Europe Transformation and
Revolution, 1945-1991: documents and analysis, ed. Lyman H. Legters (Lexington, D. C.
Heath and Company, 1992), p. 151
77
Tony Kemp-Welch, “Dethroning Stalin: Poland 1956 and its Legacy,” in Challenging
Communism in Eastern Europe: 1956 and its Legacy, ed. Terry Cox (Routledge London-New
York 2008), p. 88
37
 himself in a situation, in which he was declaring the withdrawal from the Soviet Bloc and

Hungary’s neutrality. According to Paul Kecskemeti, Nagy did not choose this radical course

spontaneously, but rather he was forced into it by the uncontrollable, overwhelming upsurge

of the masses’ revolutionary élan.78

The feverish, fast and complex course in Hungary was generally reduced to a national

revolution or national mass action. In many studies, the national symbolic events and actions

in“1956” came to fore. My approach in the analysis of “1956” would not underestimate or

overemphasize the role of nationalism in Hungary. Obviously, people were motivated by

national discourses, some intellectuals started to search for true national expression and some

politicians gave national declarations through the course of events. Still, there were symbolic

actions, which presented how people were frustrated and attacked symbols of Stalinism. For

example, Walter Kemp indicated:

It is no coincidence that the group that was the driving force behind change in
Hungary in 1956 (the Petofi Circle) was named after a poet of national resistance from
the 1848 revolution. It is also telling that the rally of 23 October, which led to a severe
crackdown, was mustered around the tomb of (Polish) General Jozef Bem, hero of the
1848 revolution. Interesting too was that Nagy popularly received the decision of 28
October wherein he promised to restore the Kossuth coat of arms (without the
Apostolic Crown) to the Hungarian flag and reinstate 15 March (the anniversary of the
1848 Revolution) as a national holiday. 79

People in the demonstrations attacked every image, which had been representing Stalin’s

repressions and terror. Many statutes of Stalin were destroyed. Heino Nyyssonen gives other
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symbolic examples, which showed the change into the celebration of national and historical

heroes:

Stalin Street was renamed the Street of Hungarian Youth, the Stalin Bridge was
renamed the Arpad Bridge, and Stalin Square became Gyorgy Dozsa Square. They
were renamed after the old national heroes of Hungary. On the 30th of October
Népszava demanded eternal glory for the dead heroes. Events were again compared to
1848, and in both cases the struggle for freedom originated from the desire for both
internal and external freedom. The new military commander of Budapest, General

78
Paul Kecskemeti, p. 152
79
Kemp, p. 147
38
 Béla Király, began to organize a Revolutionary Defense Committee comprised of
members of the army, police and National Guard. According to Király the National
Guard was “the heir of the heroic national guards of the glorious revolution and
struggle for freedom in 1848.” Moreover, Király also connected the National Guard
with the troops “who in the spring of 1849 squashed the aggressive forces.”80

There were many other examples, which demonstrate how the national fever mixed with anti-

Soviet sentiments. However, just focusing on the “elective selection” of the national fervor

does not provide a complete picture of the situation at hand. Therefore, I continue this chapter

with the deeper analysis and conceptualization debates on the Hungarian Revolution.

The debate on the conceptualization of the crisis in Hungary is vital for my research,

because it will lead to an understanding of the dynamics and aims of the Hungarian society,

the intensity of the rivalry in the party, the power of the Hungarian Communist leaders and

the Soviet Union’s approach on the “New Course.” My aim is not to reach a definitive

conclusion or deepen the debate in details. Even in current politics and historiography in

Hungary, “1956” is fiercely debated. Factions in contemporary Hungarian politics attempt to

take possession of the 1956 events. I am going to present the social transformation and the

role of many social actors and I will benefit from Gabor Gyani’s deep analysis and his

comparison between many authors and intellectuals. Furthermore, Ferenc Vali’s and Hannah

Arendt’s argumentation will be deeply examined in this chapter. I believe that, “1956” can

have several interpretations, because the developments in the society, the change in the social

and political structure and participants from every social stratum symbolize the complexity of
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“1956”. The “revolution” argument is considered to be the common approach, especially

among foreign scholars. In any conceptualization – counterrevolution, revolution, national

uprising or anti-totalitarian movement – the revolutionary elements in the society are

undeniable. Therefore, I preferred using “Hungarian Revolution” in my research, but it does

not signify that I am adhering to one interpretation.

80
Heino Nyyssönen, “Time, Political Analogies and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,"
KronoScope 6:1 2006 pp. 51-52

39
 Hannah Arendt defined “1956” in the epilogue of her book, “Reflections on the

Hungarian Revolution,” as a “spontaneous revolution,” which was conceptualized by Rosa

Luxemburg. In her political thinking, the dialectic of spontaneity and organization was her

leitmotif. Spontaneity and organization are not separable or separate activities. According to

Luxemburg, the modern proletarian class does not carry out its struggle according to a plan

set out in some book or theory. 81 Not “organized” and hence “planless,” these economic,

partial, and local conflicts continuously, “spontaneously” grew into general political and

revolutionary mass strikes – from which, in turn, further local actions sprouted up thanks to

the revolutionary situation and the potential energy of the masses’ class solidarity. 82

Hannah Arendt indicated that the theory of Luxemburg became a fact in Hungary in

1956. She emphasized the uniqueness of the Revolution: It had no leaders, was not organized,

was not centrally directed and the will for freedom was the moving force in every action. 83

Luxemburg also describes in her philosophy the workers as “the leaders of their own” and

they create their own developmental process. Parallel to what Luxemburg stressed over again,

Arendt pointed to the spontaneous formation of the worker councils and revolutionary council

system in Hungary.

The establishment of the Revolutionary and Workers’ Councils represented “the first

practical step to restore order and to reorganize the Hungarian economy on a socialist basis,

but without rigid party control or apparatus of terror.”84 This spontaneous reorganization
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represented the only alternative of democratic electoral representation to the one presented by

the Continental multi-party system, argued Arendt. She idealized the evolution in Hungarian

81
Junius, Die Krise der Sozialdemokratie (The crisis in the German social-democracy), new
ed. Berlin, 1919, pp. 82-83. Rosa Luxemburg
82
Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works) Vol. 2, trans. David Wolff,
(News & Letters, April 1980), pp. 344-77, 378-420
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1910/theory-practice/> last accessed 27.04.2009
83
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (New York: The World Publishing
Company, 1958), p. 482
84
Ibid., p. 498
40
 society and in the political realm and repeatedly emphasized the uniqueness of the revolution.

She wrote:

“Thus, the men elected for the councils are chosen at the bottom, and not selected by
the party machinery and proposed to the electorate either as individuals with alternate
choices or as a slate of candidates. The choice, moreover, of the voter is not prompted
by a program or a platform or an ideology, but exclusively by his estimation of a man,
in whose personal integrity, courage and judgment he is supposed to have enough
confidence to entrust him with his representation. The elected, therefore, is not bound
by anything except trust in his personal qualities, and his pride is to have been elected
by the workers, and not by the government or a party, that is, by his peers and from
neither above nor below.”85

Free elections, self-coordination and direct representation would enable “the council-men” to

form their unique Supreme National Council, as the counterpart of normal government and

exceptional National Revolutionary Committee, as the replacement of National Assembly.

Arendt concluded that the unique evolution of the councils, not the restoration of parties, was

the clear sign of a true upsurge of democracy against dictatorship, of freedom against

tyranny. 86

Rosa Luxemburg’s “spontaneous revolution” could emerge theoretically in the

revolutionary class-conscious worker masses in a disorganized and unplanned way. Gabor

Gyani is right in his critique indicating that the class characteristics of the Hungarian event

have to be established in order to call it a revolution, because according to the usage

requirements, a revolutionary event is the violent manifestation of the awakening of class-

consciousness of a given social group.87 Arendt laid stress on the evolution of workers’
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councils and denounced “1956” a workers’ revolution.

According to Gyani, the British historian Bill Lomax put the same emphasis on the

revolutionary and self-regulatory aspect of the Hungarian society. 88 Lomax thought that the

85
Ibid., p. 499
86
Ibid., pp.500-501
87
Gabor Gyani, “Revolution, uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956,”
European Review of History, Vol. 15, No. 5 (Routledge, Oct 2008), p. 519
88
Ibid., p. 520
41
 self-mastery of the workers in establishing direct control over their factories through the

workers’ councils, had thus in one blow both smashed the former state power ruled over by

the Communist Party, and reopened the road to a society in which hierarchy would give way

to equality, and political institutions would be replaced by social power.89 Many intellectuals,

political scientist and historians object to the over-emphasized role of the worker class in

1956. The defenders of the “National Uprising,” “Counterrevolution” and “Anti-Totalitarian

Revolution” bring out the diversity of the social actors in Hungary 1956.

The conceptualization of “1956” as a National Uprising attaches importance to the

“national” component. According to its supporters, the change and transformation in Hungary

could not be dedicated to one class. Rather it was a collective action by politically conscious

masses. Gyani warns about the choice of uprising, revolt or freedom fight, because exact

wording reveals the bias of the researcher, but these definitions have something in common.

They do not imply a sudden and spontaneous action. These conceptualizations changed

variably to emphasize the direction of dissidence against the mismanagement of the leader,

corrupt policies of the party or government, and the alien ideology or the presence of foreign

forces. However, the convergence uprising, revolt or freedom fight with the idea of

nationalism will bring the researcher to a very different point. My main interest is to

understand if the national component of the conceptualization played a dominant role in

explaining sources of motivation and frustration.

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According to Ferenc Vali, the conflict was not essentially between communist and

anti-communist forces. Rather, Hungarians strived for freedom from foreign control. Vali

pointed out that the Hungarian government underwent successive transformations from

October 23 to November 4. From a Communist administration, subservient to the Party, it

became a successively a pseudo “national” government, an inner cabinet of mixed

89
Bill Lomax, Hungary 1956. (London: Allison & Busby, 1976), p. 203
42
 allegiances, and finally balanced, representative coalition government. To allay difficulties

and counteract the aftereffects of monopolistic Communist rule, it had to resort to extra-

constitutional revolutionary measures, such as the creation of the Revolutionary Committee of

Armed Forces. The central government, under revolutionary pressures and in view of its own

de-Sovietization and democratization, had to acknowledge the existence of the de facto

revolutionary groups and institutions. 90 Vali indicated:

All institutions of the country worked together to express its national freedom,
sovereignty and its break-up from the supranational entity, the Soviet Union. The re-
centralization under new national institutions were completed with the acts of
legitimization, which started on October 26 with the Party’s recognition of worker’s
councils and the encouragement of their formation, continued with the opening of
governmental negotiations with the Freedom Fighters on October 28, and reached a
climax with in a declaration by the Prime Minister on October 30. The revolutionary
organization in Budapest and in the provinces had been declared legal and
incorporated into the administrative system of the country. 91

People cannot deny the fact that national elements, symbols and declarations were

existent in “1956” and had partially motivated the society and triggered the idea of freedom,

national sovereignty and neutrality. However, it does not mean that nationalism was the most

powerful factor that led to a rift within the communist party and united people against the

proletarian internationalism. The national emphasis is also related to the form of the event.

Actually, the violent atmosphere and reaction produced a sudden detachment from socialist

doctrines and the institutional dismissal support the idea of spontaneity. However, people had

been suffering from cultural and political limitation, police terror and experiencing economic
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hardship. In such an environment, frustration and resentment were aggregated and many

social groups, even reform-minded people in the party, were signaling the need for reform and

liberalization. Moreover, “1956” did not occur because of the consciousness and unity of one

social class or sole national impulse. Therefore, the conceptualizations as revolution and

90
Vali, p. 320
91
Ibid., p. 321
43
 national uprising are in a sense limited, because there are many more actors with diverse

interests in “1956”.

The peasantry had played important role in the initial phase and in the later stages.

Younger kulaks carried revolutionary action outside of big cities. Older representatives of the

wealthier peasants occupied leading positions in local affairs. Intellectuals took also an

important role in the revolution. They were the mediators between the party and masses.

Since communist takeover, they witnessed how Marxist-Leninist ideals and tenets were

evaporated due to corruption in politics and violent measures, even against their comrades.

The contradictions between the communist ideal and reality estranged them and transformed

most of them into reformers.

The metamorphosis of the intellectuals was not always balanced and moderate. Some

of them were marginalized because of the strict policies and became non-conformist.

Eventually, both disappointed groups facilitated the masses and played an active role in the

formation of the civil movement. Reform-minded and non-communist intellectuals organized

forums, discussions and meetings. Obviously, they were the mental workers of the revolution,

who also took part in the formation of councils.

Other important groups, who had played an active role in “1956”, were the university

students and the youth. Before the outbreak of the revolution the university students had

triggered political mobilization and declared their radical demands. According to Gyani:
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The revolutionary mobilization of university students requires a little more

explanation, because the universities’ strict admission policies before 1956, along with
the intense ideological propaganda incorporated in university training, were not the
ideal breeding ground for revolutionary activism. Since the admission policies favored
students who came from the lower social classes, university students were counted
among the more reliable supporters of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the
Communist system.92

92
Gyani, “Revolution, uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956,” p. 522
44
 Additionally, the youth surprisingly played crucial role in fighting against the state authority

police and the Soviet troops. The brutal policies already affected them and caused total

irritation against the pro-Soviet government. Their relatives and families were directly

affected by the brutal policies of the regime and many of them grew up in bad living standards

and experienced economic hardships. Most importantly, they lacked the freedom in the over-

politicized society, which caused them to question their identity and their indoctrination in the

education system.

The most critical dynamic force during the revolution was the workers, which had

diverse interests and reasons to support or to resist. Workers were not a homogenous group in

Hungarian society and especially industrial workers were the social and economic basis for

the communist regimes. In exchange, they had benefitted from social and political

prerogatives, which were provided by the Party. However, as Gyani emphasizes:

The actual circumstances of the workers in general were not really better than the
circumstances of any other social group. The politics of forced industrialization
inflated their numbers tremendously, which in turn brought about further changes,
both structural and mental. Industrial workers in the 1950s were nothing like their
counterparts in the 1920s and 1930s.93

Gyani points out that a widespread feeling of uncertainty and transience set in, with

many people becoming confused about their identities:

The declassee’s of the 1945 changes experienced this growing feeling of uncertainty
just as much as those who replaced them, and who faced the task of becoming the new
intelligentsia, the new elite or the new working class in this cartwheel of social
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mobility from one day to the next. In the Hungary of the mid-1950s, there was not one
compact social group whose identity coincided with their image.94

Gyani expresses that this general feeling of uncertainty was the crucial factor in the formation

of revolutionary potential. He called this phenomenon “the mobility trap”:

The rapid industrialization forced by the Stalinist political elite, coupled with the
determined efforts to keep society in a perpetual state of mobility, dug its own grave.
The reason why this “social politics” eventually proved to be a trap was that the

93
Ibid.
94
Ibid., p. 523
45
 mobilization strategy, which was meant to stabilize the system and legitimize the
duplicitous seizure and arbitrary exercise of power, backfired.95

Gyani’s emphasis on the feeling of uncertainty, the diversity of interests and the mobilization

of different factions in the society shows that the developments in Hungary were not

attributable to the definition of homogenous national revolution.

The notion of revolutio works better to describe the analytical meaning of the
Hungarian anti-Soviet and anti-Communist disturbance. The reason has been that the
main thrust of the Hungarian situation in 1956 was similar to the seventeenth-century
English and the eighteenth-century American “revolutions,” to return definitively to a
point of departure by regaining some of the formerly lost social and political
liberties. 96

Gyani sees the changes in Hungary as an act of restoration, a return to an earlier stage,

because “1956” had a declared goal and had a foreseeable conclusion:

Finally we come round to 1956: if most of the demands that the instigators of the
events had in mind merely concerned “restoration” instead of progressive changes,
such as the elimination of the monopoly of the Communist party and its replacement
with a multi-party system, the institutional restoration of the established freedoms of
bourgeois democracies and the creation of some forms of direct democracy anew (the
possible antecedents of the workers’ councils included the revolutionary councils of
1944–1945 and the factory and national councils of later times), then the propriety of
applying the word “revolution,” when meant in the modern sense, is at least
doubtful.97

Gyani has true remarks on the motivations of the social forces in Hungary and he finds

that “1956” carried more counterrevolutionary aspects than revolutionary traits. “1956” was

more of a restoration than a further extension of modern revolutions. In this strict conceptual

sense, and only in this sense, 1956 was more of a counter-revolution than a revolution, since it
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was a return, rather than a step in the progressive direction, according to the notion of the

permanence of revolutions. 98

It is still hard to define “1956” as a conscious act to restore former order. In my

opinion, Hungary did not experience true democratic consolidation. Two World Wars, ethnic

95
Ibid.
96
Ibid., p. 519
97
Ibid., p. 526
98
Ibid., p. 527
46
 tensions, border disputes and foreign interventions prevented true pluralism and parliamentary

system. During the crisis, people wanted their freedom, independence, democratic, civil,

social and political rights. People were living in a bipolar world as they were neighboring

“neutral” Austria, “Titoist” Yugoslavia and pro-Soviet countries. The importance of turbulent

atmosphere in Poland should not be overlooked. Obviously, the party and social forces

affected them from their neighboring countries. Yugoslav “national communism”, Austrian

neutrality and the Polish Revolt had played an important part in defining Hungarian future.

After the Party had lost its total control and Nagy was forced to head the government,

there was no more elite driven socialist reformism or revisionism. Arendt was at some point

right about the uniqueness of the workers’ and revolutionary councils. People acted in a short

time and formed councils in an almost democratic manner, in which they voted and elected

their representatives directly. People were demanding a neutral foreign policy and crying out

for national independence instead of Soviet patronage. Hungary was under foreign

supervision since the start of the Second World War. These demands were pointing out

anything but restoration of old order.

On the other hand, Gyani is right, because many reform-minded workers, intellectuals

and party members did not have the aim of abolishing communism in Hungary. I believe that,

“1956” had no definite direction, which does not mean that it was a revolution. The multiple

actors with diverse interests fought for their freedom. We could not theorize and guess the
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regime or developments what if the Soviets did not interrupt Hungarian freedom fight,

because the Soviet leadership and communism were intertwined with the Hungarian

administration, culture, society, politics and security. The anti-Soviet feeling also facilitated

the feeling of uncertainty and mobilized masses. Moreover, it was partially a national

uprising. The circulation of national and historical symbols, search for the national identity

and the rise of the national declarations, overlapped with the anti-Soviet feeling, resentment

47
 against Rakosi-Gero clique. The complex“1956” had one common motivation, which was the

fervent desire for freedom.

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48
 SECTION 4: CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968

4.1: The Prague Spring: Transformation in Czechoslovakia

Dubcek’s premiership gave hope to all forces in society, and many people in

Czechoslovakia were expecting a strong will and initiative, which would accelerate the reform

process and end the inequalities between the Czechs and Slovaks. However, Dubcek had to

follow a cautious path in order to appease the Soviet leadership. Dubcek delivered a speech at

the Twentieth Anniversary of communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, “February Revolution.”

The speech disappointed people in the party and society, because he strongly emphasized the

need to “uphold democratic centralism” and “enforce the leading role of the party.”99

Jaromir Navratil indicates that Dubcek had the will to implement reforms, which

would have made people in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union uncomfortable. In the

earlier draft of the speech, Dubcek wanted to express innovative formulations in the

Czechoslovak foreign affairs. However, Dubcek’s projects were removed from the speech,

however, because of the attendance of party and state officials from Warsaw Pact countries.

Precautious behavior of Dubcek and his team indicated the existent distrust and doubt of the
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Warsaw Pact members with the new Czechoslovak leadership. The awareness on the Warsaw

Pact members’ surveillance would help to lead “Prague Spring” last longer than Hungarian

Revolution.

Dubcek decided to implement domestic reforms but in a gradual way. He was aware of

the failures of Novotny’s leadership, domestic policies and discriminative attitude toward

99
“Alexander Dubcek’s Speech Marking the 20th Anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s “February
Revolution,” February 22, 1968” ” in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A
National Security Archive Documents Reader, 1998 , p. 51
49
 Slovak people. Dubcek started to develop political and institutional reforms, which would

improve the administrative methods, democratize the internal functioning of the party and

disconnect party and state institutions. Moreover, Dubcek wanted to include forces outside the

party mechanism, which had been stigmatized by the former leadership. Zdenek Mlynar, the

head of the Commission on Political Reform, proposed the participation in decision making of

independent political and social groups alongside the communist party. He did not advocate a

true multiparty system, but instead foresaw the enhancement of the National Front and of the

role of the non-communist parties in it.100

According to Bracke, the Prague Spring was not only an elite-led top-down process,

but rather it was a double development. On the one hand, it was a movement of political and

economic reform, initiated and carried out by the communist party leadership. On the other

hand, it was a movement of intellectual and cultural revival in the broadest sense. With the

relative emancipation in the reform process, intellectuals and writers found great space to

maneuver. For example, the Czechoslovak Writer’s Union demanded full rehabilitation of all

citizens who had been unlawfully imprisoned, persecuted or hurt professionally after February

1948. An open letter signed by 134 writers and cultural figures on March 25 called on the

Czechoslovak Communist Party to “stand up to international pressure motivated by doubts

about the nature and objectives of our internal measures,” and to move the nation toward

“permanent democracy.”101 The mutual dialogue between the party members and the support
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from social groups resulted in the emergence of the “Action Program.”

Immediately after preparing the “Action Program” Dubcek had to reassure the Soviet

leadership and Warsaw Pact members. Dubcek wanted to show that the “Action Program”

100
Bracke, Which Socialism, Whose Détente? West European Communism and the
Czechoslovak crisis, 1968, p. 136
101
“Open Letter from 134 Czechoslovak Writers and Cultural Figures to the CPCz Central
Committee, March 25, 1968” ” in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National
Security Archive Documents Reader, 1998 , p. 76
50
 emerged out of popular demand and was not dangerous for the legitimacy of the communist

parties in Warsaw Pact. The main fear among the member parties was that they feared a

chain-reaction of popular demands in their countries, especially after the implementation of

indigenous reform programs. Dubcek emphasized that the current socialist system in

Czechoslovakia was damaged by the former leadership and contaminated by the corrupt

actions and policies. The Action Program aimed to strengthen the system according to

Marxist-Leninist tenets.102 While the plan envisioned small steps toward “political pluralism”

and “reform of the whole political system so that it will permit the dynamic development of

social relations appropriate for socialism,” the authors of the Action Plan stressed the

solidarity of Czechoslovak foreign policy with the Soviet bloc:

We stand resolutely on the side of progress, democracy, and socialism in the struggle
by the socialist and democratic forces against the aggressive attempts of world
imperialism…The basic orientation of Czechoslovak foreign policy…revolves around
alliance and cooperation with the Soviet Union and the other socialist states.103

Dubcek and his team needed to constantly emphasize over and over the indivisible connection

between the sole position of the party and its mutual and coherent role in the international

socialism, because the Czechoslovak Communist Party would be reorganized into a true

political party with a mission “to inspire socialist initiative” rather than dictate it. Dubcek was

totally against the monopolistic concentration of power. The party would secure its leading

role through consolidation of the true socialist system, which would require the support from
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other political parties of the National Front and rapprochement of all social and cultural

forces.

At the Central Committee’s April session, Dubcek’s Action Program was formally

adopted. The Program called for a wide-ranging societal initiative, for an open exchange of

102
Peter Sugar, “Continuity and Change in Eastern European Authoritarianism: Autocracy,
Fascism and Communism,” East European Quarterly, 18 (1984) p. 20
103
“The CPCz CC Action Program, April 1968 ” in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring
1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, 1998 , p.92
51
 opinions, and a democratization of the entire social and political system, in which legal steps

were taken and aimed to secure the civil rights, freedom of speech, assembly and travel.

Furthermore, the Program shut down political surveillance by the secret police; abolished

censorship in scientific publications, works of art and the mass media; predicted gradual

mixing socialist economy with a market one, and introduced semi-free elections. The Action

Program also called for “a crucial change in the constitutional arrangement of the relations

between Czech and Slovaks, and to carry out the necessary constitutional modifications.” A

“socialist federal arrangement,” according to the plan, would redress the Slovak problem and

provide for “the legal coexistence of two equal nations in a common socialist state.”104

Another important aspect of the Action Program was the formulation of a new active

European policy. Although the Czechoslovak leadership emphasized its interdependent and

mutual relationship with the Warsaw Pact members, the new independent foreign policy was

totally controversial against the dogmatic vision of the Soviet-led internationalism, especially

in East and Central Europe. To prevent Czechoslovakia’s isolation, Dubcek and his followers

sought more active participation in international organizations, especially the United Nations

and its bodies.105 The independent initiative in international affairs started with the

normalization of relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, which was a taboo for the

Eastern Bloc and could have definitely irritated East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia’s desire to connect with the rest of the world emanated from its own
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national and strategic interests. In addition to international liberalization, the Action Program

granted the communist party a privileged role in the National Front, and the other political

104
Milan Hübl, “The Legacy of 1968,” in Communism and Eastern Europe: A Collection of
Essays, ed. Frantisek Silnitsky, Larisa Silnitsky, Karl Reyman, (Brighton: The Harvester
Press 1979), p. 27
105
Bracke, Which Socialism, Whose Détente? West European Communism and the
Czechoslovak crisis, 1968, p. 137
52
 groups in it were considered as partners but not as equals to the party.106 International and

domestic liberalization emanated from intellectual debates during 1960s. The novelist Milan

Kundera and the playwright Vaclav Havel were crucial intellectual symbols in the

Czechoslovak national and international revival.

Their personal and artistic backgrounds also differed considerably: Kundera had first

gained recognition as a lyric poet with orthodox communist themes, only later gaining

prominence for his innovative fiction, while Havel, who was of a slightly younger generation

and from a wealthy Prague family, had never joined the Communist Party. 107 They played

important roles through the Prague Spring. Their interpretation of different aspects of

liberalization signaled the varying emphasis on Czechoslovak domestic and international

identities. Charles Sabatos brilliantly compares Havel’s and Kundera’s approaches:

Kundera’s concept of “critical thinking” idealized what he called the Czech national
“destiny,” while Havel called for the “courage” to look at the difficult issues of the
present. At the time, this polemic was seen as representing two camps: reform
communists, such as Kundera, and those non-communists more skeptical of the
possibility of true reform, including Havel. 108

According to Sabatos, the Fourth Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union in

June 1967, and in particularly the speeches by Milan Kundera and his fellow novelist Ludvik

Vaculik, was a major turning point in the Czechoslovak intellectual awakening. Josef Korbel

has described the speeches of this congress as fascinating: “The Czech language, which had

been mutilated by Russisms during the Stalinist years, shines in all its richness and beauty; the
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themes, formulated up to then only in journals in scholarly terms, are expressed in a

scintillating variety of literary styles.” 109 The resentment against Soviet impositions such as

Russian language instructions in school and in literature gave rise to “critical thinking,” as the

106
Ibid.
107
Charles Sabatos, Criticism and Destiny: Kundera and Havel on the Legacy of 1968,
Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 60, No. 10 (Routledge, Dec 2008), p. 1827
108
Ibid.
109
Jozef Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of its History (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 277
53
 Czech intellectuals started to rediscover their cultural and historical richness and search for

their true identity in Central Europe. Kundera presented this historical and cultural

inbetweenness as a unique trait of Czech society. According to Kundera, the greatness of

Czech culture lay in:

The whole course of our nation’s history, torn between democracy, fascist
enslavement, Stalinism and socialism, and further complicated by its unique
nationality problem, features every important issue that has made our twentieth
century what it is...Our nation then has experienced, I daresay, more than many others
have in this century and, if its genius has been alert, it will now know more than the
others.110

Kundera’s approach was reflected in the party’s identification of its new active role in

international politics. The foreign policy was formed according to Czechoslovak national

interests. The Czechoslovak leadership was determined not to be enslaved by a supranational

entity in its international relations.

Havel was demanding true domestic liberalization and freedoms. Vaclav Havel

published the essay “On the Theme of an Opposition,” which called for a genuine opposition

party to the all-powerful communist party. Havel evoked “the strong and specific

Czechoslovak democratic and humanistic tradition” and suggested that the new opposition

party “could be a democratic party drawing on this tradition of democracy and humanism.” 111

Havel was asking for true opposition, a control mechanism, which could check and balance

the whole system. Havel was defending the need of “self-criticism.” In my opinion, a
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controlled National Front would function as a self-critic of the regime and its policies.

The “true consolidation of the regime or true reconciliation with the outer world”

debate would culminate within mobilized social factions and intellectuals in order to support

domestic and international liberalization of Czechoslovakia. The Soviet leadership had been

110
M.Kundera, ‘Speech at the Fourth Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union (1967)’
in Hamsik, D. (ed.) Writers Against Rulers (New York, Random House, 1971) p. 169
111
Václav Havel and Paul Wilson, Open Letters: selected prose 1965-1990, (New York, Vintage,
1991), pp. 30-31
54
 pressing for the protection of the “leading role of the communist party” and against

Czechoslovakia’s deviations from the socialist fraternal relations. According to Vilem Precan,

independent public opinion was being formed and expressed. An infrastructure of

organizations and institutions emerged, wresting themselves free from the “leading role of the

Party,” and the foundations of a new political and social pluralism and the prerequisites for

the renewal of civil society began to take shape.112

The problem lay in the fact that the Warsaw Pact members were pressuring the

Czechoslovak leadership to halt the reform process, purge “the harmful” elements in the party

and society, and renew party control over the country. The party was also aware that it had to

reassert its authority, because the reform process became an organic mechanism, which was

now way beyond the scope of the party initiative. While existing political parties, the Socialist

Party and People’s Party, were reactivated, a Social Democratic Party came into being,

without formally being legalized. Some new organizations, which would be defined

counterrevolutionary elements in Czechoslovak society by the Warsaw Pact members and

hardliners in the Party, emerged with different interests:

“Influential new organizations were KAN, the Club of Engaged Non-Party Members,
and K213. The first was a club for political discussion, which wanted to participate in
the building of “a new political system, hitherto never realized in history: democratic
socialism.” It advocated party pluralism and the defense of civil and human rights. It
was founded by 144 members, a number which rose to 3,000 just before the invasion.
The K213 was a more controversial matter: it was organized as a group of former
victims of the communist takeover, charged by the 1948 “Law for the Defense of the
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Republic (n.213).” Its starting point was to strive for the rehabilitation of all victims;
from there, it broadened the debate on human rights. None of these parties or groups,
however, was allowed into the National Front, and they continued to have a semi-
illegal status.”113

The relative rise of the civil society and civil initiatives resulted in the development of

a civil control mechanism, in which independent and semi-independent social actors were

demanding a true legal system. All social groups were calling for the full rehabilitation of all

112
Precan, “Dimensions of the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1967–1970,” p. 1665
113
Bracke, pp. 140-141
55
 citizens, communist and non-communists, who had been victims of unlawful practices over

the past 20 years. The civil initiative demanded a fair legal process, in which the authorities

responsible for the crimes had to be punished due to their indirect or direct involvement.

“The press, radio, and television were filled with condemnations of the political
leaders deemed to be ultimately responsible, including, Gottwald, Bacilek, Cepicka,
and Novotny, but also of lesser figures – high officials, security investigators, judges,
procurators, and lawyers. Many, it was charged, still held public office and had
blocked the implementation of rehabilitation. Certain incumbents, such as A. Neuman,
the Minister of Justice, J. Kudrna, Minister of Interior, J. Bartuska, Procurator
General, J. Litera, Chairman of the Supreme Court, and others tried to defend
themselves publicly, with varying degrees of admission of guilt and self-criticism, but
were soon removed from office.”114

Following public demand for the replacement of Novotny as head of state, the CC Plenum of

April voted in Svoboda as the new President of the Republic. Like Dubcek, Svoboda was a

compromising figure in favor of moderate reform led by the party.115 The reformist movement

also targeted the military, the secret police and internal security network, which were directly

involved or indirectly prevented the rehabilitation processes. Important personal change took

place and the Dubcek leadership also aimed to shift the advantage for reform into the cadres

of security forces.

Both civil and political authorities saw the completion of rehabilitation as a moral and

political obligation. Moreover, the victims of illegal practices had to be recovered and unified

with new system, which had to give moral, personal, economic and social aid to the victims.

The rehabilitation process was important for the regime so that it could face its prior crimes
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and not repeat Novotny’s mistakes by declaring, the rupture and independence from the past

administrations and personalities. The pressure of the civil initiative evidenced growing

democratic consciousness. There were now forces outside of the intra-party opposition and

they wanted to see the new regime raking over the ashes of the past. Eventually, the civil

supervision and pressure on the rehabilitation process would also provide the transparency of

114
H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, p. 375
115
Bracke, p. 137
56
 the courts. That would directly result in the revision of the incorrect administrative measures

and the rehabilitation of the law and justice.

The reform movement strengthened the hands of the social forces, which could not be

responsible for the Soviet leadership, which stifling the reaction and critiques against the

Czechoslovak authorities. The social forces witnessed the gradual slowdown of reform and an

increase of the party initiative. The Dubcek leadership was taking too much risk, while the

Party was following a middle road, in which it tried to appease everyone. According to Vilem

Precan, the “independent public” was mobilized by two fears in particular:

The first was that the new regime would only consider the demands of some social
entities and see the demands of others as incompatible with the “leading role of the
Party.” The second fear was that the reform leaders would give in to pressure from
outside. In other words, the current leaders of the Czechoslovak state and Party would
be unable to respect, and defend, the right of the Czechoslovak people to decide on
internal matters in their own country, and would give preference to the interests of
“socialism” and “international obligations,” that is to say, they would give in to
Moscow.116

Written by the writer Vaculik and signed by 70 artists, intellectuals and public figures,

the “Two Thousand Words” Manifesto was published on 27 June 1968. The Manifesto was a

civil intervention against the Party’s vanishing will to reform and was concerned with the

present threat and intervention of the foreign forces. It advised the revival of the National

Front, demanded a public meeting of national committees and emphasized the need of special

citizens’ committees and commissions to solve the problems. Moreover, the Manifesto
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requested the change of the district and local press, which had degenerated into a mouthpiece

for official views. It called for the formation of editorial councils to be composed of

representatives of the National Front and demanded the establishment of committees for the

defense of free speech. Furthermore, the Manifesto pointed out the need for resolution of the

116
Precan, p. 1667
57
 Czech-Slovak question and it considered federation as one means of solving the nationality

problem as well as an important step toward democratization.117

The cosignatories indicated that they did not want to create chaos and a state of

general insecurity. However, they argued that the people of Czechoslovakia should take

“direct action” at the local level, through debate, demonstrations and strikes in order to

provide a continuation of the reform process. Furthermore, it proposed that the people take

necessary armed action to back the government, if the foreign countries were to intervene in

their internal affairs. Consequently, the “Two Thousand Words” Manifesto exasperated the

Warsaw Pact leaders and shocked the Dubcek leadership, because it was obvious evidence for

the leaders of Warsaw Pact that the Party had lost its leading role, and the reform process had

mutated into a counterrevolutionary movement. Unfortunately, the Czechoslovak leadership

condemned the text in a Central Committee resolution, mainly due to these internal and

external pressures.

The reform process in Czechoslovakia was first activated by the Czechoslovak elites

in the communist party. The intra-party struggles and limited pluralism in the party gave birth

to the “Prague Spring.” The gradual and relatively calm nature of the reform movement did

not immediately facilitate the civil initiative. The party could consolidate its regime without

major swings from the party and society. Therefore, many commentators avoided describing

the process in Czechoslovakia as “a revolution.” According to Gordon Skilling, many

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scholars preferred moderate concepts, such as “political change” or “the reform movement,”

because the aim of the party was not the destruction of socialism, but rather a reformed

socialism, non-Stalinist and democratic.118 The elite-driven reforms affected legal procedures,

but through existing institutions. The pace of legislative change was slow, as the Slovak

117
“2000 Words: A Statement on Democratization” (East Europe, August 1968) in Eastern
Europe: Transformation and Revolution, 1945-1991, ed. Lyman H. Legters (Lexington, D. C.
Heath and Company, 1992), p. 215
118
Skilling pp. 827-828
58
 Question was not resolved and federalization of the regime was not reified until the end of

Prague Spring.

On the other hand, Czechoslovakia had experienced a dual liberalization process, not

only within the party initiative. There was a growing public opinion, a rehabilitation of non-

communist victims, a formation of non-communist, civil and intellectual communities and a

strengthening of civil initiatives. Civil society could express itself and apply pressure for the

continuation of reform, but they did not involve themselves in non-constitutional forms of

struggle, as they did not aim to overthrow the government nor to seize political power.

Skilling indicated that if the process had not been interrupted from the outside, the Prague

Spring would have transformed itself into a revolution. He argued that the process had

revolutionary character and that people were willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the new

status quo, but that they were also demanding true political pluralism and independent foreign

policy. In my opinion, it was true that especially the post-invasion period especially had

shown that civil and social forces had the potential to change the system into a democratic

pluralist regime. In the “Two Thousand Words” Manifesto, they called for free elections and

for the real revitalization of the opposition parties. Skilling wrote in his book

“Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution:”

“January was the product of a breakdown of the old order conforming to Lenin’s
classic recipe for a revolutionary situation: the rulers were unable to continue to rule in
the old way, and the ruled were unwilling to be so ruled. It involved the gradual loss of
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power by a strong ruling group – the bureaucratic or apparatchik class, some 100,000
in number – and a portentous shift in the balance of forces within the party and in
society as a whole. Although the impetus for reform was initially given by party
leaders and by certain intellectual elite, all social groups were eventually drawn into
the quickening currents of political action. Moreover, the changes envisaged were
many and substantial, and affected all aspects of life without exception. At least three
major reforms were extremely radical in the context of the Soviet model. The extent of
freedom of expression was a complete break with the Soviet pattern of censorship and
indoctrination. The rehabilitation process was intended to correct gross injustices in a
thorough and systematic manner unequaled in other communist countries, and was to
be accompanied by radical changes in legal procedures. Federalization, designed to
reorder Czech-Slovak relations on a federal basis, was without parallel in

59
 Czechoslovakia either before or under communist rule, and was the antithesis of the
pretenses of Soviet federalism.”119

The developments, especially in pre- and post-invasion, signaled the possibility of a

revolution. The social forces mobilized themselves in a passive resistance, which transformed

into declarations, demonstrations and general strikes. One of the main differences between the

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring was in the role of the party leadership.

The Czechoslovak Communist Party did posses the power to balance Soviet demands and

civil-social requests. The equilibrium between internal and external pressures was destabilized

not only because of the growing civil dissidence and frustration. Rather, the party followed an

independent path to organizing its foreign relations. Both factors, elite and civil initiatives,

had facilitated the destabilization of the regime.

In my opinion, the progress in Czechoslovakia was evolutionary, not revolutionary.

The Czechoslovak and Slovak Party created the relative pluralist atmosphere, which was

boosted by with the growth of the civil-intellectual initiative. The gradual permission of the

formation of the non-communist movements and groups, and the controlled activation of the

National Front were part of this “evolutionary process.” Czech and Slovak lands became the

center of civil, political and intellectual forums. The reforms were implemented gradually not

to enrage the Soviet leadership and nor to lose total control to newly emerged social forces.

Czechoslovakia was carrying legacies, misdeeds, criminal personalities, lawless legal system
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of the former regime. It was hard process for the new Czechoslovak leadership to take

advantage in the political, bureaucratic and security cadres, which were still packed with hard-

liners in pre-invasion. With the motivation and pressure, the legal, social and administrative

system started to change gradually. Thus, the Warsaw Pact troops interrupted an evolutionary,

organic and healthy process in the Prague Spring.

119
Ibid., 834
60
 4.2: De-centralizing Prague Spring: “The Slovak Question”

The Czechoslovak crisis in 1968, popularly known as “Prague Spring”, carries the

discriminative legacy of Prague centralism. One of the main differences between the

Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring was the ethnic composition in Czechoslovakia and

its reflection on the central and local parties, elections, representations, decision-making and

reform process. Slovaks in Czechoslovakia provided a check and balance system against the

centralist tendencies of the Czechs. The “Slovak Question” was always waved aside by the

Czech authorities, which had acted aggressively against the national demands of Slovaks in

many instances. Moreover, Slovaks were more than a regulating factor in Czechoslovak

society: They took leading positions in the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and they always

questioned the administrative, political and structural reforms. They also wanted to establish

equal relations with the Czechs, based on a federal state system.

The Slovaks experienced the fear of total assimilation since the fall of the Great

Moravian State in the tenth century. Despite the thousand-year national dependence and

strong Magyar influence, the Slovaks were not subdued and survived as a nation. During the

First World War, the Czechs and Slovaks joined forces to form a common state. The Pittsburg

Agreement, signed May 30, 1918 by representatives of Slovak organizations active in the US

and T. G. Masaryk, the Czech representative, set the stage for the foundation of this state.
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According to this agreement, the new state was to include the Czechs and Slovaks, since the

Slovaks preferred to enter the new, democratic Czechoslovakia, rather than remain constantly

subject to the Magyar threat.120 The Pittsburg Agreement provided Slovaks a kind of semi-

autonomous status, in which they formed their government and their own court. The

120
Frantisek Silnitsky, “The Nationality Problem,” in Communism and Eastern Europe: A
Collection of Essays, ed. Frantisek Silnitsky, Larisa Silnitsky and Karl Reyman, (Brighton:
The Harvester Press, 1979), p. 33
61
 Slovakian language became the official language, to be used in the schools and universities.

Czechs and Slovaks would work for mutual independence to form one country.

However, the government of Czechoslovakia became more centralized with each

passing day. The “Slovak Question” started to arise from the very beginning of the

establishment of the multinational Czechoslovakia. Another legacy, which would persist even

after Gustav Husak’s normalization and federalization of the country, was the national idea of

“Czechoslovakianism” in the new Czechoslovak state. According to this idea, Czechs and

Slovaks were considered to be one national group. Frantisek Silnitsky indicated:

Czechoslovakianism was, at that time, not a political invention. To the contrary, this
was the result of joint actions by the Czechs and Slovaks against the Magyarization of
Slovakia, and it embodied an entire set of attitudes – from the view of the Slovaks as a
branch of the Czech people who lived under Hungarian rule, to the concept of the
Czechs and Slovaks becoming unified in one state.121

In order to prevent Magyarization and strengthen national consciousness, the Czech

authorities promoted the development of Slovak culture. In my opinion, Czechoslovakianism

was transformed into a political project. Starting with Magyar influence, Czechoslovak

nationalism was reified until the end of the Second World War and the expulsion of German

minorities against Nazi expansionism.

The new system of political pluralism, with the multi-partied government of the

National Front in 1945, aimed to abandon Czechoslovak nationalism. However, the Czech

National Council was disbanded in May 1945 and incorporated into the central government of
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the Czechoslovakian Republic. Despite this, the Slovaks were allowed to maintain special

autonomous organs of government, while none are available for the Czechs. The Communist

Party of Slovakia existed as a special subdivision of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

with no equivalent on the Czech side. Silnitsky indicated that the Czechoslovak government

automatically identified with the Czech people because of the absence of Czech national

121
Ibid., p. 34
62
 political organs. 122 This asymmetrical political arrangement, in turn, created inequalities in

representation and decision-making and resulted in Prague centralism.

The lack of communist traditions in Slovakia was one of the important reasons for

Prague centralism and the persistence of the “Slovak Question.” The Communists were

considerably stronger in the Czech provinces than in Slovakia. While over 40 percent of the

Czechs cast their ballots for the Communist Party in the 1946 elections, the Party was the

choice of only a little over 30 percent of the voters in Slovakia. Of the 2,311,066 members

and candidates of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1949 only 236,432 were from

Slovakia, or slightly over 10 percent, although more than one-quarter of Czechoslovakia’s

population lived in that area.123

Edward Taborsky suggests that the reasons for the weaker standing of the party in

Slovakia than in the Czech provinces was that Slovakia suffered more heavily at the hands of

the Red Army than did Czech provinces. Slovak Catholicism goes deeper and is more

conservative than the Czech variety. Despite a recent upsurge in its industrialization, Slovakia

remained more agrarian than the Czech areas and had therefore a smaller ratio of industrial

workers. Much less confiscated property was available for distribution in Slovakia than in the

Czech provinces and thus there was much less reason to be thankful for gifts from the

communist donors.124

The rise of the communists in the Czechoslovak government and the takeover of the
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key political institutions, ministries and security forces resulted in the liquidation of political

pluralism starting from 1948. An asymmetric form of limited federalism, which included the

setting up of Slovak institutions such as the Slovak National Council and the Communist

Party of Slovakia, was inscribed in the constitution in 1948. In practice these institutions were

122
Ibid., p. 36
123
Taborsky, Communism in Czechoslovakia 1948-1960, p. 41
124
Ibid., p. 42
63
 deprived of real powers. The methods of communists, which were aimed to dominate cultural,

economic and political realms in Czechoslovakia, revitalized the idea of Czechoslovakianism

to imply socialist unified nation. The Slovak Question was ignored due to the doctrines of

Marxism-Leninism, which predicts denationalization of the society. The communist regime

had maintained the classic Marxist-Leninist view and thought that the problem of nationalities

would solve itself automatically once Slovakia had caught up economically. 125

The failed reforms did nothing but increase public discontent. Those who were

insisting on bringing the Slovak problem to the surface, were called provocateurs and accused

of being “bourgeois nationalist.” Stalinist consolidation was needed to purify the Communist

Parties of Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. Therefore, the party began to expose its enemies

within its own ranks and sentenced many important figures of the Slovak Uprising. Until the

Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, Prague

centralism had functioned well and suppressed the dissident voices from Slovakia.

The 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia limited the autonomy that had already been

granted to Slovakia. The Slovak national political organs were deprived of practically all of

their most essential rights. However, Slovakia was undergoing intense economic

development. Paralleling the economic growth was a strengthening of Slovak national

consciousness and increased demands for an analysis of national relations within the

Czechoslovakian state.126 The economic betterment was not the sole reason for the Slovak
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awakening. The Slovak people were aware of the Czech superiority and discrimination, which

was legalized in the 1960 Constitution. In almost all institutions, for instance, the trade

unions, the Academy of Sciences, the youth league, and the cultural associations, Slovaks

were in subordinate positions, and subject to bureaucratic rule from Prague.127 For Slovaks,

125
Bracke, p. 135
126
Silnitsky, “The Nationality Problem,” p. 39
127
Skilling, p. 53
64
 any real or cosmetic reform had no legitimacy, because Slovaks had identified Novotny with

the constitution of 1960 and thus with the weakening of Slovak national institutions. Scott

Brown indicates that the individuals responsible for the trials of other Slovak Communist

leaders emerged uncompromised while the heresy of “Slovak nationalism” remained

operative.128

The de-Stalinization process in Czechoslovakia directly affected the Slovak leadership

in 1963. Alexander Dubcek took the lead after his struggle against the hardliners, while Karol

Bacilek and Pavol David and became the First Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party.

Dubcek symbolized a new current in Slovak politics, in which he would promote and defend

the Slovak national interests. He started his struggle against Czechoslovakianism, which had

been justifying the inequalities under the name of converging into one nation.

To this end, the Communist Party of Slovakia celebrated important national milestones in

Slovak history. In 1963 it commemorated the centennial of the Matica slovenska, an

important Slovak cultural and educational organization. The following year it celebrated the

twentieth anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising with great fanfare, holding ceremonies

attended by not only Novotny, but also Nikita Khrushchev.129

These events, especially the celebration of the Slovak National Uprising and

Novotny’s necessary recognition, were critically important for the Slovak nation, because it

officially condemned the erroneous policies on Slovak national figures. Moreover, it

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exculpated the imprisoned and then partially rehabilitated personalities like Gustav Husak.

Husak’s political comeback was critical for the treatment of the “Slovak Question,” because

Dubcek was following a relative cautious policy on the idea, federalization of

Czechoslovakia. According to Skilling, the Communist Party of Slovakia occupied a peculiar

128
Scott Brown, “Socialism with a Slovak Face: Federalization, Democratization, and the
Prague Spring,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sage Publications,
April 2008) pp. 467–495 p. 473
129
Ibid., p. 474
65
 position in this struggle between Prague centralism and Slovak nationalism. 130 Brown points

out that although Dubcek was promoting Slovak national consciousness as the First Secretary,

he did so in constant reference to the need for state unity, making no mention of his opinion

on federation.131 Husak’s inclusion in politics started with his participation in Smolenice

conferences, in which he indicated the need to push the federalization debate toward a new

constitutional arrangement. His public appearances had an impact both in Prague and

Bratislava. This, in turn, made Husak a deputy chairman, responsible for developing a new

constitutional basis for Czech-Slovak relations. Husak’s appointment revealed the popular

demand for the resolution of the “Slovak Question.”

The Czech public, especially intellectuals, were not ignoring the agenda of the Slovak

leadership. Many reform-minded Czechs supported the Slovak cause in de-centralization.

According to Frantisek Silnitsky, political terror, anti-Semitism and its tragic consequences –

the persecution of the so-called Slovak bourgeois nationalists – all led the Czechs to raise the

issue of morality and conscience in politics.132 Reform-minded Czechs were defending the

respect for national rights, which would follow an overall democratization of the country. The

Slovak Question, thus, mobilized both Slovaks and Czech and in the end, it contributed to the

fall of Novotny leadership. Bracke emphasized that the Prague Spring was a national revival,

in a double sense.133 In my opinion, general approach, which named the reform spring in

Czechoslovakia as “Prague Spring”, concentrated only on the revival of Czechoslovak

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national identity. The revival of the Slovak national consciousness was overlooked. Both

Slovaks and Czechs questioned the place of Czechoslovakia not only in the socialist world.

According to Czechoslovak intellectuals, the Czechoslovak identity was inescapably

130
Skilling, p. 54
131
Brown, “Socialism with a Slovak Face: Federalization, Democratization, and the Prague
Spring,” p. 475
132
Silnitsky, p. 40
133
Bracke, p. 138
66
 connected with the European identity, culture and history. On the other hand, Slovak national

revival should not be ignored in evaluating “1968”.

The question of federalization was critically important in 1968 reform process of

Czechoslovakia, where the former First Secretary of Slovak Communist Party, Alexander

Dubcek, headed the government. Federalization and democracy were the key words in the

debates among Czechs and Slovaks. Even Slovaks were not unified about the federalization

issue, which transformed the Czechoslovak political and cultural space into a multilateral

forum. The language of Slovaks could vary among themselves, but the popular slogan of the

Slovaks was “first federalization, then democratization.” As Scott Brown indicated:

According to many Slovaks, federalization and democratization were mutually

dependent. Federalization The Slovak intellectuals in the late 1960s saw
federalization as a necessary precondition for democracy; they regarded the nation as
one of the basic units of democracy, which led them to champion institutional
safeguards for Slovak national rights as a prerequisite for successful
democratization. 134

On the contrary, after Novotny’s removal, the Czech intellectuals started to favor the

argument “first democratization, then the Slovak Question.” Some Czechoslovak thinkers

accused Slovaks of being obsessed with the form of the administration of Czechoslovakia,

and therefore Slovakia and they represented that “liberalization”, which was aimed by the

Czechs, was a noble cause in form and content. Brown indicated that even Slovak

intellectuals had recreated the misleading juxtaposition of reform as “a matter of form and
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contents, while federalization was by definition “a matter of form only.” 135

On the other hand, many other intellectuals who had a neutral stance on the

“federalization-democratization” debate argued that Czech and Slovak motivations would

converge within the liberalization process. The argument “first federalization” served

different interests of the Slovak politician and intellectuals. Some Slovaks would press for

134
Brown, p. 467
135
Ibid., p. 469
67
 federalization to balance the hereditary inequalities that existed even in the reform process, in

which they blamed Czechs for their discriminative and ignorant positioning against Slovak

people. Therefore, they repeatedly brought the Slovak problems to the surface.

Other supporters of the “first federalization” argument feared democracy would be

incomplete and untenable without a satisfactory settlement of the Slovak question. They

thought democratization without federalization would lead to majoritarianism, an outvoting

by the numerically larger Czech population that would leave the Slovak nation just as weak in

a reformed Communist state as it had been in the democratic order of the First Republic.136

Therefore, they wanted first federalization, in which their institutions, political organs and

national rights would be protected. The federalization-democratization debate lasted until the

invasion of Warsaw Pact members.

However, both societies were beneficiaries during the reform process. Many Czech

had internalized “Slovak Question” and they recognized eventually that it was the question of

Czechoslovakia, which needed both democratization and federalization simultaneously.

Therefore, as Jaromir Navratil put in words, the “Slovak Question” thus became the catalyst

of the entire subsequent development towards the “Prague Spring.” 137

The federalization-democratization dilemma was resolved after the military

intervention of the “Warsaw Five.” Federalization was the only major reform from the

“Action Program” to survive the demise of the Prague Spring. The Soviet leadership
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recognized the potential of federalization to normalize the relations between the Czechs and

Slovaks. 138 The Constitutional Law of Federation was passed on 28 October 1968 and led to

the federalization of Czechoslovakia. From 1 January 1969 the state was sub-divided into the

136
Ibid., p. 487
137
Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968, A National Security Archive Documents Reader p. 7
138
Carol Skalnik Leff, The Czech and Slovak Republics: Nation versus State (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1996), pp. 65-66
68
 Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. The previous Czechoslovak

parliament was renamed the Federal Assembly and new national parliaments were created.139

This should not be seen as “victory in defeat” for Slovaks. On the contrary, as Milan

Hübl indicates the constitutional enactment of the federation, adopted after the occupation on

October 27, 1968, was the only judicial enactment of one of the 1968 reforms: neither a

federal constitution, separate constitutions for two republics, nor new laws securing criminal

and civil rights were enacted.140 Federalization under the authoritarian rule showed Slovaks

that it was meaningless just to cry out for national interests. Gustav Husak, national hero-

survivor of the trials, under the Soviet supervision resumed recentralization under the disguise

of “formal” federal institutionalization. The content was empty without democratization and

therefore, the imagined democratic-federal regime stayed as a fiction. Husak renewed the

discourse of Czechoslovakianism in different terms and in a new way. The unitary federation

normalized and suppressed the hopes for liberalization and democracy.

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139
Cashmann, p. 1652
140
Milan Hübl, “The Legacy of 1968,”26
69
 SECTION 5: THE INVASIONS

5.1: Marxist-Leninist legacy: The Instrumental Approach to Nationalism

For Marx and Engels the nation-state was primarily an economic unit, an objective

condition that stemmed from a rational set of circumstances.

Nation was the product of capitalism. Therefore as capitalism was a transitional phase
on the evolutionary path to socialism, so too was its by-product – nationalism. As
capitalism would evolve into socialism, nation-states would wither away (or at least be
controlled by enlightened internationalists) and there would be no impetus for national
sentiment.141

Marx and Engels did not realize the national problematic as a serious fact and modern

formation. Marx and his followers considered nationalism as an invention of bourgeois

capitalism, a part of modernity that would wither away along with the state once society

reached the post-capitalist phase of history and embraced class consciousness, not nationality,

as the prime source of identity. The Communist Manifesto indicated the national strategy of

the proletariat: the working man has no country. We cannot take from them what they have

not got.142

Despite Marx and Engel’s outlook that nationalism would lose its significance in time,

the revolutions of 1848 in Europe did not follow the predicted Marxist path. Nationalism

showed itself to have much stronger appeal than socialism. Indeed, nationalism was by and

large underestimated by Marx and Engels. According to them, those states that were the most
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nationalistic were the least developed. They would therefore have to be encouraged to

modernize in order to pass through the phase of capitalism and then on to socialism. If they

could not modernize quickly enough they would have to be dissolved or assimilated by larger

economic units. As a result of these criteria Marx and Engels became very forthright in their

support of certain national movements, which they interpreted as being in the vanguard of the

141
Kemp, p. 23
142
Ronaldo Munck, The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism (London: Zed Books
Ltd, 1986), p. 24
70
 international revolution. 143 For this very reason their line of argument necessitated to co-opt

nationalism as a political tactic not an ideological current. Socialist movements had stolen the

clothes of nationalism when it suited them, or denounced it when it did not.144

“Revolutionary nationalism,” advocated by Lenin, differed from the original Marxist

views insofar as it recognized the importance of national feelings and encouraged the notion

that every nationality exhibits its own particular virtues (language, culture and history) and

therefore enjoys the right to its own existence. The practice of appealing to revolutionary

nationalism first arose during the Russian Revolution. The aim was using revolutionary

nationalism to oppose and undermine the power of bourgeoisie elites. As a result, Lenin did

not wish initially to abolish nations. Since the proletariat must acquire political supremacy,

they have to rise to the leading class of the nation, therefore, they become ‘national’, but not

in the bourgeois sense of national formation. Once in power the proletariat can work to

diminish national antagonisms between different states. Thus, Lenin’s approach to

nationalism in a much serious way indicated that Marxism must take both tendencies into

account, advocating the equality of nations on the one hand and the struggle against bourgeois

nationalism on the other.145

Lenin was a fierce supporter of the idea of national self-determination, which would

later lead to the breakdown of national barriers and make anything but the most resolute

proletarian internationalism a regressive policy. In a sense, Lenin’s slogan right to national

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self-determination was itself a tactic to supersede nationalisms and promote socialism. But

Lenin was aware of the controversial character of nationalism. Nationalism clearly had the

capability to either stabilize or destabilize communist polities. 146 Therefore, Lenin set socialist

143
Kemp, p. 26
144
Munck, The Difficult Dialogue, p. 1
145
Ibid., p. 73
146
Robert Zuzowski, “Nationalism and Marxism in Eastern Europe.” Politikon: South African
Association of Political Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, (April 2006), pp. 71-72
71
 patriotism or revolutionary nationalism apart from bourgeois nationalism. Lenin’s

instrumental attitude towards nationalism, the nation-state and national self- determination

reflected the pressure of social realities upon doctrine.

5.2: Dogmatic Simplicity or Tactical Complexity

Marxist-Leninist view on nationalism had functioned as a simple guidance of

understanding nation and nationalism. The communist leaders of Eastern Europe were

expected to follow two basic principles: The protection of the leading role of the communist

party and international socialism. The communists stigmatized the idea of “national,” which

would damage the cohesion and equality between fraternal communist states. National

interests had to be suppressed by the party leadership. The emphasis on the leading role of the

party in communist regimes was the product of the Soviet double-speak: The communist

parties in Eastern and Central Europe had never established their independent peculiar

leaderships. Basically, the “leading role of the party” had signified the leading role of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the policy makers of Eastern Europe,

therefore, had to consult the Soviet Presidium, when they wanted to implement policies.

Soviet-led international socialism made the indigenous communist parties dependent

on the Soviet demands. Their economies, especially heavy industrialization and production,

were directed to the needs of the Soviet Union. The intra-state agreements were always in
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check by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Most importantly, the indivisible nature

of the Communist Bloc prevented them from contacting the Western world. Besides foreign

affairs, domestic politics in Eastern and Central Europe were controlled by Soviet agents,

military officers, political police and consultants. The pilgrimages to Moscow were

determinant in domestic policy approvals. In some points, if it was seen necessary, the Soviet

authorities and delegates would visit the countries in order to make sure that the indigenous

72
 party would not pose any problems. Moreover, the Kremlin had to give consent to the

replacements, elections and reforms in the communist regimes. Thus, the regimes could make

first step towards “consolidation.”

Stalinist oppressive methods enabled the indigenous leaders to establish their

communist regimes. However, de-Stalinization produced anomalies in Eastern European

societies. Khrushchev ordered the leaders to leave Stalinist methods and reform their system.

The intra-party conflicts were echoed in the communist parties of Eastern Europe. On the one

hand, the Soviet Presidium promoted reform-minded communists. On the other hand, they

allowed conservative Muscovites to retain their offices. It was a strategical move to protect

the bases of control in the communist parties. However, de-Stalinization created “parallel

reality,”147 in which the Soviet leadership deployed both reformists and conservatives in

Eastern European communist parties. The dual leadership caused a parallel administrative and

bureaucratic structure. Simultaneously, relative liberalization in the society exacerbated the

situation and created a chaotic atmosphere. On the one hand, the reformers tried to implement

reforms and appease the masses; on the other hand, they resisted conservative majority in the

party and state apparatus.

Due to internal and external demands for reform and control, the society oscillated

between repression and liberalization. The distrust against Soviet experimentalism, the

chaotic reform process and the intra-party rivalry led the reformers to seize public support.
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Kemp indicates the legitimacy dilemma of the communists:

The goal of most nationalists is to gain control of the state as a means of structuring
the national will in order to make the state mechanism and national organism one and
the same or, in other works, to build a nation-state. The Communists worked in
reverse. Once they controlled the state they tried to gain control of the nation by
championing its history and distinctive cultural traditions. As they would discover, one

147Antonin Liehm, “The Czechoslovak Reform Movement,” in Eastern Europe

Transformation and Revolution, 1945-1991, ed. Lyman H. Legters, Lexington, D. C. Heath
and Company, 1992), p. 184
73
 can hold power by controlling the state; but one needs to secure the support of the
nation to have legitimacy and authority. 148

At this point, the communist party leaders facilitated not only reforms based on de-

Stalinization, but also reforms based on indigenization. Some Eastern Bloc countries excluded

Russian language teaching from schools and rehabilitated national heroes vilified during

Stalin’s period. The parties started to celebrate national holidays. Moreover, official histories

of various Eastern European nations were revised. For example, during Stalinist

consolidation, textbooks of Hungary were purged of nationalist prejudices in order to

eliminate national identities and to create communist consciousness. In early 1954, a

Resolution of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party dealing with the

state and tasks of public education decided to reverse the process and strengthen the patriotic

feelings of Hungarians. In order to improve the teaching of the mother tongue, Hungarian

literature, history and geography, the Resolution emphasized all the important progressive

factors of Hungarian history. 149

The process was part of “state-sponsored nationalisms.” 150 The Soviet Union and the

leading parties of Eastern Europe implemented national policies from above. There were no

mass demands and action for policy change from below. It was not the nationalists who tried

to conquer government; it was the government that used nationalism to win the backing of the

population.151 People were not against these national reforms and liberalization, but the
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problem was that they were demanding their civil, social and political rights. Moreover, they

wanted to live in better economic conditions and they wanted the party to stop state terror. To

sum up, they wanted a legal and more democratic state.

148
Kemp, p. 6
149
George Barany, “Nationalism in Hungary,” in Nationalism in Eastern Europe, ed. Peter F.
Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), pp. 301-302
150
Peter Sugar, “The Problems of Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Past and Present,” in East
European Nationalism, Politics and Religion (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1999) p.
10
151
Ibid., p. 9
74
 The diversity and context of the demands had no meaning for the Soviet leadership,

which was concentrated only on two conditions. Anything that would threaten the omnipotent

presence of the indigenous parties caused an immediate reaction in the Soviet Union.

Political pluralism and the increase in the civil initiative were the direct dangers against the

communist regime. All reforms in the liberalization process were simplified and stigmatized

by the Soviet leadership as national deviation or counterrevolutionary activism. Therefore the

approach of the Soviet leadership was hypocritical. The popular support for Nagy and Dubcek

did not change the attitude of the Soviet leadership, which even did not question if reform

process was answering the specific needs of the societies. From the start, the Soviet Union

was against the differentiation of the societies. Thus, the Soviet Union used the idea of

“national” in its simple equation, which should not deceive the researcher while analyzing the

Hungarian Revolution and Prague Spring. The Soviet Union reduced the complex reform

processes in both countries to simple terms: Imperial agents, bourgeois nationalist and

counterrevolutionaries.

Naturally, this attitude fostered national reactions or search for the national identity

and triggered anti-Soviet feeling. In the Soviet-imposed and bipolar system, people belong to

the proletarian international class or “bourgeois nationalist.” Because of dependent foreign

policies, limited cultural space, including compulsory teaching of the Russian language in all

schools, and repeated declarations of solidarity with stages people were forced into a
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supranational framework that was not clearly defined, never clearly or comprehensively
152
explained, but were big, frightening, strange, impersonal, and nationally deracinating. The

communists subjugated citizens to the collective illusion of an identity of the “People-as-

One,” which was confronted with permanent attacks by “enemies of the people.” Social

reality was “defined” by a dream world, where the daily life of shortage, delusion, and

152
Sugar, “The Problems of Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Past and Present,” p. 15
75
 victimization was tolerated due to the eschatological vision of a better world. 153 According to

Maria Todorova, the main cause of growing tension in Eastern Europe stemmed from Soviet

domination. As long as the Soviet Union existed, it provided Eastern Europeans a collective

“other.”154 In other words, Soviet indoctrination and coercion resulted in the creation of a

collective other, the Soviet Union itself. It should not be surprising why people were easily

motivated and attacked in fervor the symbols of the Soviet repression both in Hungary and

Czechoslovakia.

5.3: The Soviet Invasion in 1956: Intimidation

After Stalin’s death, the Soviet leadership swept into obscurity, because the Presidium

and the Party had never experienced healthy collective leadership during Stalin’s

administration. The legacy of Stalin was rivalries, greed, jealousy and factionalism in the

party. The power struggle between Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev

had affected the communist regimes and their leaderships in the East and Central Europe.

Ferenc Vali argued that both the rise of Imre Nagy to the premiership and his fall from that

position were primarily attributable to oscillations in the internal balance of the Soviet

Presidium.155 The fluctuations in Malenkov-Khrushchev duumvirate damaged the Hungarian

leadership and the uncertainty of the Hungarian Communist Party was also echoed in

Hungarian society.
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According to Vali, the concept of irresponsibility for acts committed outside the

Soviet Union, acts for which Stalin might have been blamed, eventually led Khrushchev to a

contradictory position: anti-Stalinism within the Soviet Union, and neo-Stalinism in most of

153
Harald Wydra, “The Power of Second Reality:Communist Myths and Representations of
Democracy,” in Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe, ed. Alexander Wöll and
Harald Wydra, (New York: Routledge 2008), p. 66
154
Maria Todorova, “Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Communist legacy in EE,” East
European Politics and Societies 7:1 (Winter 1993), p. 153
155
Vali, p. 165
76
 the satellite countries. 156 Khrushchev, who spoke for reforms, change, de-Stalinization and

progress in rehabilitation, caused Nagy’s removal from the Prime Ministry and the Hungarian

Communist Party. Ironically, Malenkov had recruited Nagy first as the Prime Minister by

replacing hard-liner Stalinist Rakosi as General Secretary. So, the Soviet leaders were always

the biased referees in the resolution of intra-party conflicts and their indecisiveness created

dual leadership in 1953 and helped to foster polarity in the party between conservative and

reformist factions.

To stop the disarray within the Hungarian leadership and the growing ferment in

Hungarian society, Anastas Mikoyan was charged by Khrushchev. Upon his arrival in

Budapest on 13 July, Mikoyan met with Rakosi and three other senior Hungarian officials,

including Erno Gero. These preliminary talks convinced Mikoyan that the situation would

improve only if Rakosi stepped down. Having been authorized by the Presidium to do

whatever was necessary to “restore unity in the Hungarian leadership”; Mikoyan bluntly

informed Rakosi that it would be best if someone else took over as HWP First Secretary.

Rakosi had little choice but to accept the Soviet “advice” and Gero was endorsed as the new

First Secretary.157

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union delayed the option to interfere physically

and tried to reconcile the Party with the society. However, the method of trial and error had

frustrated the society even more. Gero was incompetent to understand the needs of the
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society, which had hope for liberalization during Nagy’s “New Course.” The rise in the

activities of the dissident groups in any communist country would be interpreted by the Soviet

Union as the ascendancy of the “subversive activities of the imperialists” and the Soviet

leaders and conservative groups in the indigenous communist party stigmatized the reformists

as “bourgeois nationalists.”

156
Ibid., p. 213
157
Kramer, p. 179
77
 Because of the self-defense mechanism mixed with hysterical paranoia, Gero called

upon the Soviets to request help and invited the Soviet troops. A Soviet Presidium meeting

had already been scheduled for 23 October to discuss other matters and Khrushchev abruptly

changed the agenda to focus on the situation in Hungary. 158 Khrushchev and all but one of the

other participants strongly supported the introduction of Soviet forces, but a key Presidium

member, Anastas Mikoyan, opposed the decision, arguing that the Hungarians themselves

will restore order on their own. He thought that the Soviet leadership should try political

measures, and only then send in troops. Despite the pro-intervention consensus among all the

other participants, Mikoyan held firm in his opposition. The Presidium therefore had to adopt

its decision without unanimity, an unprecedented step in such an important matter.159

Contrary to common judgment and expectation, the discussion in the Soviet session showed

that the Soviet-decision making was not homogenous and open for evaluations, but it did not

change the truth that Khrushchev authorized Soviet Defense Minister Zhukov to redeploy

Soviet units into Budapest to assist Hungarian troops and state security forces in the

restoration of public order.

After the first wave of fighting, in which “the freedom fighters” were successful

against the forces of state authority and Soviet Union, the Hungarian government announced

on 28 October that the recent event had been a national-democratic uprising rather than a
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counterrevolution. The fighting caused the deaths of hundreds of Soviet soldiers and

Hungarian civilians. This, in turn, resulted in the change of the Soviet views, and the Soviet

leadership had to support the current government and prepared to withdraw troops from

Budapest. On 30 October, the Soviet Union announced “Declaration on the Principles of

158
Ibid., p. 183
159
Ibid., p. 184
78
 Development and Further Strengthening of Friendship and Cooperation between the USSR

and Other Socialist Countries:”

The Soviet-Eastern European relations had been plagued by “egregious mistakes” in

the past, and that Moscow had committed rampant “violations of the principle of
equality in relations between socialist countries.” It pledged that in the future the
Soviet Union would scrupulously “observe the full sovereignty of each socialist state”
and reexamine the basis for its continued troop presence in the Warsaw Pact countries,
leaving open the possibility of a partial or total withdrawal. 160

Khrushchev had aimed to reconcile the Union’s relations with Hungary by following the

peaceful path. Yet, it was too late to slow down the demanding masses of Hungary, which

were creating an alternative to the communist system by establishing revolutionary and

workers’ councils.

According to Mark Kramer, the grisly reprisals, that some of the insurgents carried out

against disarmed troops of the Hungarian state authority, caused even greater alarm in

Moscow.161 The last impact on the Soviet leadership was the Hungarian decisions: First,

withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and then, the declaration of neutrality. Both decisions were

absolutely not acceptable for Khrushchev, who immediately reversed the decision of

negotiation. So, the Presidium unanimously approved the full-scale use of military force to

protect the worker class in Hungary. Khrushchev said during his delegation visits in 1958: “in

giving aid to the Hungarian people in routing the forces of the counterrevolution, we fulfilled

our international duty.” 162 The final acts brought an end to the long period of indecision and
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wavering in Soviet policy.

The Soviet Union could not take the risk of losing a Warsaw Pact member and the

leadership was aware that as a last option they would take military action. Moreover, the

160
Ibid., p. 187
161
Ibid., p. 189
162
“Triumph of indestructible of Soviet-Hungarian friendship”- The Soviet Party and
Government Delegation Visits in Hungary Source Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press,
No.14, Vol.10/14, (Minneapolis, USA, 1958), pp. 15-16,
<http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/issue?issue=724124>, last accessed 22.03.2009
79
 Hungarian leadership was in a delusion, in which they sought the help of United Nations and

the involvement of the Western Powers by declaring neutrality. Csaba Bekes indicates that the

bipolar world system designed to stabilize the post-1945 European status quo left the

countries of the Soviet empire with no realistic chance of ridding themselves of the

communist system. Any Western effort to detach these countries would be seen as an

intervention.163 No superpower would even dare to create a directly armed conflict and the

risk of a third World War. Aleksandr Stykalin emphasizes that the effectiveness and impunity

of the Soviet action in Hungary constituted a clear proof that the postwar bipolar system of

international relations was unshakeable. 164 Besides the international outcomes, the military

invasion revealed the limitations of the ideological permissiveness that was suggested by the

national roads strategy. According to Maud Bracke, it did not cause a break with this strategy,

but it marked the limits of it in the sense that was highly disadvantageous for the autonomy of

communist parties and states worldwide vis-à-vis Soviet dominance.165

5.4: “The Rise of the Warsaw Five” in 1968

Khrushchev realized that the impact of his policies, like de-Stalinization, on the

“satellite” countries in Eastern and Central Europe could be hazardous. His social and cultural

experimentations and frequent interventions in domestic policies of other socialist countries

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stirred existent anti-Soviet feelings. Khrushchev understood that he had to pursue a much

more cautious policy in Eastern and Central Europe. However, there was an obvious lesson

for Khrushchev: The urgent need to improve economic situation in socialist countries. The

economic discontent had flamed especially workers and peasant and converged in the end

163
Csaba Bekes, “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Declaration of Neutrality,” Cold
War History Vol. 6, No. 4, (Routledge, Nov 2006), p. 493
164
Ibid., p. 493
165
Bracke, p. 54
80
 with the social and political malaise. Another crucial conclusion for the Soviet leaders was

that unequal relations and discriminative status quo between the Soviet Union and other

communist countries in East and Central Europe should be ameliorated and improved.

However, Maud Bracke indicates:

The events of 1956 did not affect the basic orientations of the internationalism of
Communist parties in the short term, because the phenomenon of “delayed
consciousness” played a role here: the effects of 1956 were only felt at a later stage, as
inside the world communist movement and inside these parties mechanisms existed by
which questions regarding major changes were tabooed. Hence, Indicative of this is
the fact that, contrary to what happened in 1968, all the West European communist
parties openly supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The internationalist
orientations of these parties were not immediately affected in 1956, because the
leaderships of these parties consciously used internationalism as an element of
continuity at a time when continuity was much needed.166

The world communist movement reacted sharply to the invasion in Czechoslovakia in

1968. Yugoslavia and Romania had opposed the idea of intervention, and then the use of

armed forces. However, the wave of suppression emerged this time, according to the needs of

the “Warsaw Five.” International socialism had been always an element of continuity,

stability and certainty for the East and Central European communist states. There were more

states, communist parties and socialist movements, which were awakened by the Soviet

action. People in world communist movement had lost their faith in the party leaderships and

communism after the Czechoslovak invasion. However, the consciousness in the Eastern Bloc

had to be delayed again, as people in many neighboring states demonstrated against the Soviet
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violations and consequently, the communist governments silenced the masses by taking

repressive measures.

Alexander Dubcek was aware from the beginning of his leadership that his decisions

and actions needed to be in harmony with the basic principles of the Soviet Union. However,

people were impatient and demanded more and more reforms in Czechoslovakia. Through the

democratization process, the social forces found more space and mobilized themselves in

166
Ibid., p. 56
81
 order to pressure the Czechoslovak leadership. According to the members of Warsaw Pact,

the Dubcek leadership gradually lost the control of the reform process. Kieran Williams stated

that Dubcek and his team deviated from the Soviet operational code in three ways: they tried

to avoid meetings with Soviet counterparts, they did not indicate clearly whether they allied

themselves to the pro-Moscow faction within the Czechoslovak leadership and they

repeatedly promised to reassert control of the reform course, but never carried out the

measures Moscow expected.167 The security and unity of the communist bloc were critically

important for the Eastern and Central European communist regimes.

The German Democratic Republic and Poland adopted the most critical attitude

towards developments in Czechoslovakia. They believed the present situation in Europe was

extremely tense, a result of the policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Therefore, it was

essential to strengthen ideological unity and unify the defense of the European socialist

countries, already threatened by Yugoslavia and Romania’s autonomous policies. 168 The fear

that Czechoslovakia might change its foreign policy and the reform process would have

spillover effect in their countries resulted in Dresden meetings on March 23. Dresden would

provide a multilateral forum to demand a suppression of the reform movement in

Czechoslovakia. According to Navratil, the conference of the six communist parties was a

significant watershed in the history of the Prague Spring, marking the first time the Soviet-led

Bloc applied outright pressure on Czechoslovakia in an attempt to halt the so-called “counter-
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revolutionary” developments under Dubcek.169

Contrary to Ulbricht and Gomulka’s direct accusations on Dubcek leadership, Kadar

followed a mean course and criticized the situation in Czechoslovakia as “strikingly

167
Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and its aftermath, p. 37
168
Navratil, p. 28
169
Ibid., p. 32
82
 reminiscent of the prologue to the Hungarian counterrevolution.” 170 The main differentiation

between the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring was the pluralism present in the

decision-making process. The Five Warsaw Pact countries, Bulgaria, the German Democratic

Republic, Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union each differently approached in the early

stages of the crisis. Gomulka, the old reformist and neo-Stalinist leader of Poland, criticized

Dubcek fiercely from the beginning. Navratil indicated that Gomulka’s pronounced hostility

toward the Prague Spring clearly stemmed in part from the difficulties he had been

encountering at home, which he suspected were being inspired, at least indirectly, by the

events in Czechoslovakia.

Ulbricht was also afraid of the waves of reforms in Czechoslovakia and its domestic

repercussions, but the Dresden meeting and Dubcek leadership reassured him partly and he

was not doubtful as Gomulka. Brezhnev also tried to follow a middle road and was enjoying

his role being a conciliator between the members of the Warsaw Pact. The other Soviet

delegates, for example Kosygin, made no attempt to hide their growing dissatisfaction with

the recent developments in Czechoslovakia. Only the Hungarian leader, Janos Kadar

respected Dubcek’s leadership and indicated that the developments in Czechoslovakia should

not be their concerns. He thought that the Czechoslovak leadership could solve its problems

by themselves. Navratil described the balance in Dresden meeting, in which the harsh views

of Gomulka and Ulbricht helped put pressure on the Czechoslovak authorities, whereas
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Kadar’s approach facilitated Soviet attempts to rely on “comradely persuasion” as well as

coercion. 171

The Dresden session worked on the contrary to the desired expectation: it exacerbated

the situation by irritating reformist forces, who saw the forum as an interrogation and system

170
Stenographic Account of the Dresden Meeting, March 23, 1968 in (ed) Jaromir Navratil,
The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Prague: CEU
Press Prague, 1998) p. 64
171
Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, p. 64
83
 of intimidation. Even moderate groups in the party and society were affected by this anti-

Soviet feeling. The frequency of bilateral talks was increased and the communist leaders

continued to express their concern about the course of the events. The process was much more

pluralistic than in Hungary. There was a traffic of foreign ministries, diplomats, delegations,

personal meetings and calls. On the one hand, the leaders were anxious about the possibility

that external enemies would tempt Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, they worked hard not

to jeopardize their relations with Czechoslovakia.

The situation got worse, when the Soviet negotiators expressed that the Czechoslovak

army and security forces were being weakened and subverted, the Communist Party of

Czechoslovakia was being deprived of its most loyal cadres, that West Germany and the

United States were covertly undermining the Czechoslovak regime, that Czechoslovak foreign

policy would soon become openly pro-Western and that the counterrevolutionary forces were

raging in full force.172 These reports raised the alarm among the members of Warsaw Pact

and after Dubcek’s rejection of the Brezhnev’s invitations, the need for outside military

intervention came to the fore. Dubcek’s hesitant approach to the suppression of the

nonconformist elements and the slowness of the reform process triggered intellectuals and

other social forces to attempt to prevent Dubcek’s leadership potential departure from

reformist line.

According to Navratil, the “Two Thousand Words” Manifesto came to symbolize the
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Prague Spring more than any other document. The manifesto’s author, writer Ludvik Vaculik,

was joined by nearly seventy prominent individuals, including writers, cultural figures,

distinguished scientists, and Olympic athletes, as well as a number of ordinary citizens who

signed the “Two Thousand Words:”

The statement called upon on ordinary Czechs and Slovaks to undertake direct action
at the district and regional levels – through public criticism, demonstrations, strikes,

172
Ibid., p. 114
84
 and picketing – to compel anti-reformist officials to step down. Once these officials
were out of office, the statement adds, a more vigorous grass-roots effort could be
mounted to “improve our domestic situation,” to “carry the renewal process forward,”
and to “take into our own hands our common cause and give it a form more
appropriate to out once good [national] reputation.” 173
The document concludes with a reference to “foreign forces” that might be preparing to

intervene in Czechoslovakia’s internal affairs. The signatories pledge that they and other

Czechs and Slovaks will back our government, with weapons if necessary, against anyone

who might interfere.

The Czechoslovak newspapers published the Manifesto on June 27 without the

authorization of the government. So, the Dubcek leadership was caught off-guard. Although

the Czechoslovak leadership condemned the manifesto by adopting a resolution, the Soviet

leaders denounced the Manifesto as the evidence of “anti-socialist call to counterrevolution.”

The foreign press, especially in the “Warsaw Five,” started pressure campaigns and targeted

the “Two Thousand Words Manifesto.” On the contrary, domestic forces were propagating an

anti-Soviet feeling. Dubcek and his team did not want to be interrogated by the “Warsaw

Five” and wanted Romania and Yugoslavia’s inclusion to the sessions.

Czechoslovakia was geopolitically crucial to the Soviet Union. The country was the

westernmost of those in the Warsaw Pact and the only country sharing borders with both the

Soviet Union and West Germany. Maud Bracke highlightes that Czechoslovakia was the

“weakest link” in the defense system of the European communist world. Czechoslovakia had
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refused, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, to let Soviet ground troops be stationed permanently

on its soil. In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union had drawn up a number of top-secret

agreements providing for the deployment of Soviet tactical warheads and nuclear-capable

delivery vehicles with Hungary, East Germany, Poland and also Czechoslovakia. In the

Czechoslovak case, however, the absence of permanently stationed Soviet troops made the

173
“The Two Thousand Words” Manifesto as in (ed) Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring
1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Prague: CEU Press Prague, 1998) p.
177
85
 actual deployment of these arms problematic. 174 Due to the negative developments in

Czechoslovak society, the construction of the facilities had to be postponed until 1969.

The Czechoslovak military leadership resisted against Soviet pressures to increase its

conventional military spending, and a lively public debate developed on this issue. The so-

called Gottwald Memorandum, issued by the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy

in May 1968, strongly criticized the Warsaw Treaty Organization and proposed a far-reaching

revision of Czechoslovak military policies. 175 In July, in response to the Warsaw Treaty

Organization’s military exercises taking place at the Czechoslovak border, the post-January

chief political officer, General Prchlik emphasized in a press conference the need to draw up a

new Czechoslovak military doctrine, which could change the position of Czechoslovakia and

its army in the Warsaw Pact and in the Joint Command and the role of the Political-

Consultative Committee.176

Besides disturbing changes in Czechoslovak military, the foreign policy of

Czechoslovakia in the Action Program was one of the most important reasons why the Soviet

Union and Warsaw Pact members had invaded Czechoslovakia in the end. The officials

repeated that the main aim was to strengthen mutual respect and solidarity in the Warsaw

Treaty Organization, but it could not appease the leaders due to new emphasis of assuming a

more politically active role in Europe. The new direction in foreign policy also envisaged an

independent initiative in international affairs. The Czechoslovak leadership favored a

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constructive policy vis-à-vis Romanian and Yugoslav leaders, whose autonomous policies

were not welcomed by the Soviet Union, East Germany and Poland. Furthermore, the Dubcek

leadership expressed wishes to engage in commercial, diplomatic and cultural contacts with

174
Bracke, p. 143
175
Ibid., p. 139
176
Press Conference with Lt. General Vaclav Prchlik, July 15, 1968 as quoted in (ed) Jaromir
Navratil, The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Prague:
CEU Press Prague, 1998), p. 239
86
 France, Italy and Austria. More dangerously, Czechoslovakia took steps in the direction of

normalizing relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. These all deviations led the

Warsaw Pact countries without Romania to invade the Czechoslovak territory in August 20.
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87
 SECTION 6: NORMALIZATION

6.1: Same End – Different Results: Normalization in Hungary and

Czechoslovakia

If democratization is about introducing organized uncertainty, then normalization is primarily

about restoring extreme predictability.
Kieran Williams

The normalization processes under Janos Kadar in Hungary and Gustav Husak in

Czechoslovakia have similarities and contrasts. Although Soviets had prescribed regulations

in the normalization and chosen appropriate leaders, the societies had experienced different

degrees of repression, recentralization and limitations. Soviet-led normalization predicted “the

re-establishment of rigid centralized control over the society by a disciplined, pro-Soviet

party,”177 “the reconciliation of populations with the regimes and the neutralization of the

marginal elements” 178 and “the reversal of the revolutionary change.”179

How could both societies experience so differently the normalization process under

the Soviet surveillance and control? The differences were not emanated from the experiences

of the leaders. On the contrary, both leaders were victimized due to their Stalinist measures,

had imprisoned and experienced political hardship, which showed them the errors of the anti-

reformist politicians and the terror and people’s resentment against the leadership. After their
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rehabilitation, they joined the reformist forces and took important roles in politics and, in the

end, they witnessed the evaporation of their collective-reformist leadership. However, the

Soviet Presidium recommissioned them, although they were active even during the invasion.

177
Edward Taborsky, “The Return to ‘Normalcy’,” Problems of Communism 19 (1970), p. 31
178
Zvi Gitelman, “The Politics of Socialist Restoration in Hungary and Czechoslovakia,”
Comparative Politics, 13 (January 1981), p. 187.
179
Jiri Valenta, “Revolutionary Change, Soviet Intervention, and Normalization in East-
Central Europe,” Comparative Politics, 16 (1984), p.128
88
 The differentiation in the course of normalization between these converging

personalities emanated from the nature of the resistance in both countries. There was popular

support for the continuation of reforms and revisions in both countries. However, Kadar and

Nagy were not in a position to control the process, in which the communist party became

weak because of factionalism and the leadership had lost the initiative to lead frustrated

masses. They were forced to follow people’s demands, which were too marginal and would

exacerbate the situation. On the contrary, Husak and Dubcek had been leading a gradual

reform process, in which they had partially consolidated their regime.

In the end of the Prague Spring, the party could answer neither people’s expectations

nor the Soviet Union’s callings for recentralization. The invasion in Czechoslovakia was met

with a passive and long resistance, which would play an important role in the change of

Husak’s character and policies. On the other hand, the fight between forces of occupation and

insurgents caused great tragedies in Hungary, and Kadar witnessed all wrong-doings. The

violent suppression of the Hungarian crisis, arrests, imprisonments, runaways and executions

including Nagy and many top officers exacerbated the anti-Soviet feeling. The presence of the

occupation forces worsened the situation in Hungary and cause even more resentment in the

people. On the other hand, Hungarians understood that they could not resist Soviet Union

with arms, which dashed the spirit of the revolutionary development. The Soviet leadership

was also aware of the frustration and hatred of the people and they did not expect the
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escalation of the crisis. Thus, they authorized Kadar, with relative broad powers.

Czechoslovakia’s almost bloodless resistance was not broken by the presence of the

Warsaw Pact forces. The masses were totally mobilized, and many non-communist and

reformist groups had emerged. They were willing to resist any invading force and they were

part of the reform process, which was led only by the party in the beginning of 1968. The

masses had the means even after mass arrests, imprisonments and expulsions and they

89
 demonstrated, organized strikes and worked underground. However, after the Sovietization of

their leaders, people were deeply disappointed, because they signaled a reversal in the reform

process and started to take repressive measure against many social divisions. In the end,

Husak could not consolidate his regime and his normalization process took longer than

Kadar’s.

Hungary was under Soviet military administration for several months. The fallen

leaders of the communist party took refuge in the Soviet Union and were planning to regain

power in Hungary. The Soviet leadership was demanding severe reprisals against the

perpetrators of the "counter-revolution." However, Kadar followed a different path to

legitimize his authority. In his visit to Moscow on 2 November, he did not favor large-scale

Soviet military intervention and warned that “the use of military force will be destructive and

lead to bloodshed' and added the intervention would 'erode the authority of the socialist

countries” and cause “the morale of the communists in Hungary to be reduced to zero.”180 On

the other hand, he was aware that the counterrevolutionary elements were active in the

revolution. He highlighted the existing government's failure to prevent the “killing of

communists,” and said that he “agreed with Soviet officials that it was impossible to surrender

a socialist country to counter-revolution.”181

In these meetings, Kadar declared that his new “revolutionary government” could not

be legitimate and act freely until the withdrawal of the Soviet troops. He knew how hard it
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was to have a popular base for his activities and leadership. Therefore, he repeatedly warned

the authorities that the new government must not be under the mandate of the Soviet Union.

According to Kramer, even on 3 November Kadar did not portray the recent events in

Hungary in a uniformly negative light. Although he claimed that Nagy's policy had counter-

revolutionary aspects and that hour by hour the situation in Hungary was moving rightward,

180
Kramer, p. 200
181
Ibid.
90
 he urged the Soviet leadership to recognize that the uprising had stemmed from genuine

popular discontent.182 In other words, he was arguing that the entire nation took part in the

movement, to get rid of the Rakosi-Gero clique.

In the course of time, Kadar found himself adopting the rigid formulas, which were

imposed by the Soviet leadership. In December 1956 he described the whole uprising as no

more than a counterrevolution.183 However, when Kadar analyzed the crisis and knew that he

had to be honest to the masses. He confessed his mistakes and the responsibility of

mismanagement. Even though he made less effort to downplay the Soviet’s role in the events,

Kadar emphasized more the criminal errors of Rakosi and Gero than Nagy’s misdeeds.

George Ginsburgs indicates that this preoccupation with past mistakes and awareness of the

necessity of divorcing in total the program of the newborn party from the discredited policies

of its predecessor clearly underlay Kadar's resolute.184 Kadar announced in his speech on

November 1 the creation of the new communist party and emphasized explicitly that the

Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party was not the heir and successor to the Hungarian Workers’

Party. He defined communism in Hungary as “the new type which emerged from the

Revolution, which does not want to have anything in common with the Communism of the

Rakosi-Gero group, which is Hungarian and a sort of “third line,” with no connection to

Titoism or to Gomulka's Communism." 185

Unfortunately, Kadar’s approach could not purify his terror under Soviet supervision
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in the normalization process. Two years of intensive “normalization,” including wholesale

purges, arrests, deportations and executions, culminating in the executions of Nagy and Pal

182
Ibid.
183
Ibid., p. 201
184
George Ginsburgs, “Demise and Revival of a Communist Party: An Autopsy of the
Hungarian Revolution,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep 1960), p. 789
185
“Broadcast by Radio Free Kossuth, November 1, 1956 21:00 hrs., as quoted in George
Ginsburgs, “Demise and Revival of a Communist Party: An Autopsy of the Hungarian
Revolution,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep 1960), p. 793
91
 Maleter in June 1958, were required to eliminate the most active opposition to Kadar's

regime. By the time the process was complete, more than 100,000 people had been arrested,

35,000 had been tried for “counter-revolutionary acts,” nearly 26,000 had been sentenced to

prison, and as many as 600 had been executed.186

In Czechoslovakia, people had reacted totally differently against the military

intervention by the “Warsaw Five.” The whole population, triggered by the alien existence

and the nonviolence of young people, workers and intellectuals acted spontaneously without

being controlled and managed. The civil resistance unconditionally condemned the

occupation and demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops, refused to collaborate with the

invading units and refused political collaboration of any kind. They demanded that the state

and party representatives who had been taken away by force of arms be permitted to return to

office, as well as the continuation of the restructuring of the social system that had already

begun. 187

Following civil initiative, the Czechoslovak delegates assembled at a Prague factory in

Vysocancy and, with a quorum present, adopted the resolution supporting the decision of the

Politburo of the CPC, formulated on the night of August 21 and condemning the entry of

soldiers as an act of violation of international law and the principles governing relations

between socialist states.188 The leaders of the “Warsaw Five” did not want to exacerbate the

situation in Czechoslovakia. So, they released the Czechoslovak leaders and charged Dubcek
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to reverse his policies to normalize the country. The Czechoslovak leaders were not actually

freed, they were tied up by the Moscow Protocol on 26 August. Maud Bracke indicates that it

was not an agreement, but a Diktat imposed on Dubcek and the other Czechoslovak leaders.

The protocol was a political program for systematically undoing the Prague Spring, including

186
Kramer, pp. 210-211
187
Precan, p. 1669
188
Ibid.
92
 the re-establishment of the “leading role” of the communist party and its full control over the

press, and the cancellation of the Vysocony Congress. The document further sanctioned the

troop presence, but it was affirmed that they would not interfere in the political situation. 189

Kieran Williams has explained the change of the Czechoslovak leaders as a result of

“auto-normalization.”190 The transformation was not only necessary because of the

regulations and impositions of the Warsaw Pact member states. The Czechoslovak leadership

felt the need to prevent the systemic crisis. Consequently, this unexpected change shocked

and frustrated Czechoslovak society, because they started to witness the evaporation of

reforms. The leadership began to censor and suspend periodicals and then ban new political

organizations. This, in turn, resulted in the mobilization of different social groups, which did

not want to lose their newly gained rights and freedoms. Crowds summoned in big cities

protested the new policies of the government. University students launched a nationwide sit-in

strike to demand respect for civil and political rights, but all of these anti-authoritarian

demonstrations were violently suppressed by the state.

Since the invasion, Gustav Husak had been running the Communist Party of Slovakia.

Within the support of Moscow, Husak succeeded Dubcek as First Secretary of the Communist

Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. Husak was expected to emulate Kadar’s policies in

Hungary after 1956: a relatively brief course of repression to be followed by a program of

national reconciliation, characterized by tolerance and by modernization efforts within the

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confines of Moscow’s hegemony. According to Otto Ulc, Husak steered a dogmatic course,

attacking only the progressive reformers and his former supporters. As a result, he became

189
Bracke, p. 200
190
Kieran Williams, “The Prague Spring: From Elite Liberalization to Mass Movement,” in
Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule, ed. Kevin
McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (New York: Berg, 2006), p. 104
93
 identified with the policies of the party conservatives, whereas Kadar followed a centrist

course opposing both the left and the right wings of the party. 191

Husak declared war against mobilized workers, trade unions and university students,

because the students’ national union established a pact with the metalworkers’ union to call a

general strike. Eventually, the Czechoslovak Presidium decided that the university students’

union would be banned, while the core of a new, docile union would be recruited from cadets

in military academies. Under this strong pressure, the workers’ union leader could not keep

their promises to help university students and the party broke the backbone of the passive

resistance in the end. Husak “consolidated” his regime by eliminating all political opposition

through purges, arrests, imprisonment and police terror. Jiri Valenta brilliantly compared the

different processes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia:

“In Hungary the pattern of normalization led to a flexible regime tolerated not only by
the Soviets but also by most Hungarians. Kadar’s famous slogan of 1961 – “Who is
not against us is with us” – reflects his strategy for building national allegiances and
achieving domestic liberalization. Normalization in Hungary brought an end to terror
and ushered in political relaxation and even cautious pluralism…The reverse of
Kadar’s slogan describes the process of normalization in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s:
“Whoever is not with us is against us.” Normalization in Czechoslovakia under Husak
proceeded slowly from an unsuccessful search for compromise and a fictious
endorsement of the continuation of Dubcek’s democratization to a policy of open
repression and continuous repression.” 192
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191
Ibid.
192
Jiri Valenta, “The Soviet Union and East Central Europe: Crisis, Intervention, and
Normalization,” in Communism in Eastern Europe, ed. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 346-347
94
 CONCLUSION

On the Law of Peaceful Coexistence

Socialist law and legal actions were considered in communism to be an instrument,

which would serve the domestic and international policy needs of the Soviet Union. First of

all, they were defined by Stalin domestically to advance the cause of socialism. Then,

Khrushchev formulated the law of peaceful coexistence in order to halt radicalization in

Hungary, but it was a last moment attempt, and unsuccessful one. However, the events in

Hungary and Poland had shown the Soviet authorities the need to establish a legal order, in

which intra-state relations and the tenets of international socialism had to be arranged. In

domestic or international law, the legality reflected special bias and purpose of the Soviet

leadership. Bernard Ramundo indicated that Soviet domestic law was said to serve "the

building of communism," a euphemism for continued Party rule of the Soviet Union. In their

statement of the international legality they endorsed, the Soviets had not been so obvious,

preferring instead to mask a similarly biased and subjective legality behind the more

objective-sounding legal standard of "peaceful coexistence.”193

In the Post-January period of Czechoslovakia, its active foreign policy and the

normalization with the West had paralyzed the Warsaw Treaty Organization. After many

multilateral forums and bilateral meetings, the Warsaw Pact members invaded
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Czechoslovakia and violated mutual relations and respect between member states. Brezhnev

had felt the need to rationalize and justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Therefore, the

“Brezhnev Doctrine” was established and legalized the law of peaceful coexistence in

September 1968. Ramundo explaines:

193
Bernard A. Ramundo, “Czechoslovakia and the Law of Peaceful Coexistence: Legal
Characterization in the Soviet National Interest,” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 5 (May
1970), p. 963
95
 The law of coexistence is divided into two fundamental principles of "peaceful
coexistence" and "international socialism." The principle of peaceful coexistence
applies only to relationships with non-socialist states and takes into account the Soviet
needs of waging the international class struggle with capitalist states. It outlaws
nuclear warfare, a principal Soviet concern motivating the policy of coexistence, but
otherwise permits revolutionary struggle and competition between the two camps. 194

The principle of international socialism arranged the status quo and put the Soviet Union on

the top of the authority. In other words, the principle of peaceful coexistence licenses the

Soviet ordering of socialist-camp relationships and relied on the perspective of the Soviet

Union. The weakness and the strength in the policy of coexistence were the “organic and

flexible” structure of the international socialism. Ramundo pointes out that the law of

peaceful coexistence was subject to the imperative of the need to accommodate the constancy

of change and the ambiguity of the principles of peaceful coexistence and was designed to be

sensitive to change within the parameters of the basic policy.195 Therefore, the actions of any

member state could be condemned and stigmatized as a deviation from the tenets of

international socialism.

Imre Nagy was removed from his office in the government and party, because Nagy

was disgraced by the Soviet authorities due to his foreign and domestic policies’

conceptualization based on the “Five Principles”: mutual respect for territorial integrity and

sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit,

and peaceful coexistence, which would encapsulate all the other principles and formulated
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later by the Soviet Union. The principle of international socialism would function according

to the national interests of individual socialist states as well as their collective interest in

building Communism. The Hungarian Revolution proved only the latter, the need to take

action in order to protect the interests of socialism.

194
Ibid., p. 965
195
Ibid.
96
 The occupation in Czechoslovakia and the legal rationale justifying “fraternal

assistance” had represented the double standards in peaceful coexistence and socialist

internationalism. Although the law of peaceful coexistence decries the use of force in

international relations, it does not outlaw the use of nonnuclear force. Such force may be used

to wage a "just war" such as self-defense, national liberation and resistance against

aggression.196 Therefore, in both crises the Soviet Union accused imperial influence and

present provocation, which would facilitate and lead counterrevolutionary forces. Another

justification for the Soviet rationale was the need to protect the true interest of the

Czechoslovak people. Dubcek’s leadership had been working both against the collective

interest of the camp and its own people.

The doctrine argued that the forces of occupation targeted and acted against anti-

socialist factions in the country. The concept “enemy of the peoples” such as imperialist

agent, bourgeois nationalist, revisionist and anti-socialist had always “justified” the Soviet

initiative. All “Five Principles” had no meaning in the end, when the doctrine legalized the

statement “the socialist countries resolutely oppose the export and import of

counterrevolution.” Anything could be labeled under the Soviet initiative

“counterrevolutionary” and used as a reason to interfere and to take necessary action.

According to Ramundo, the Brezhnev Doctrine had violated the principle of sovereignty by

claiming that bloc relationships were strictly the internal affairs of bloc countries. 197 In other
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words, individual socialist parties or regimes had responsibilities not only to its people but

also to the other socialist countries and the entire communist movement.

The Czechoslovak crisis put an end to de-centralization processes in the Eastern and

Central European communist regimes. The Brezhnev Doctrine reemphasized that each

individual party was responsible for the cohesion of the international socialist system. The

196
Ibid., p. 970
197
Ibid., p. 974
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 collective action by the “Warsaw Five” proved the uniformity and coherence of the Pact

against the Western powers. After Yugoslavia and Romania’s autonomous policies,

Czechoslovakia sought after independent relations with the West. Following a national and

independent path was obvious violation of the socialist doctrines and mutual responsibility

between the camp members.

The invasion reinforced Brezhnev’s authority and restored Soviet Union’s place in the

hierarchy as the undisputed leader in the Eastern Bloc. However, passive resistance in

Czechoslovakia had exposed that there was no existent influence of Western powers. The

occupied troops did not face any mass resistance and it showed that the counterrevolutionary

forces theory of the “Warsaw Five” was just a delusion and Czechoslovakia experienced a

more active and non-violent mass civil resistance in the post-invasion period. Ironically, the

Brezhnev Doctrine indicated that they acted in order to assist the people of Czechoslovakia

and to save them from the imperial-counterrevolutionary factions in the party and in the

society.

The world communism was damaged because of the violation of the fraternal relations

between communist countries. The European communist movement was especially disgraced

by the illegal intervention and many communist parties started to question international

socialism and the role of the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia and Romania condemned that the

Brezhnev Doctrine and indicated the bias or one-sidedness of the Soviet interpretation on
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legality, equality and self-determination. The invasion provided a short-term consolidation,

temporary restoration of the Soviet rule in the East and Central European communist

countries. However, after 1968 all hope for reform within the communist framework died and

dissident movements with more far-reaching objectives started to emerge: The change could

only come through people’s organizing themselves outside the structures of the party and

98
 state. Their activities would eventually lead to the complete abolition of the Eastern European

communist regimes.198
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198
Fowkes, Eastern Europe 1945-1969, p. 81
99
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